On Sunday, Howard Kurtz and Griff Jenkins of Fox News took Republican vice presidential nominee and Senator JD Vance (R-OH) to task for his promotion of the debunked allegations that Haitian migrants are eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.
They tried to contend that he is squandering time on the issue with only a few weeks left until election day.
Vance has focused a single story about a missing cat to substantiate his claims, but the cat’s owner has since disclosed that the pet was in her cellar the whole time.
“Well look, let’s start with the fact that there’s no shortage of cat names now, courtesy of JD Vance, who initially amplified on social media this claim,” Jenkins said.
“But I think Karl Rove put it best when he wrote this week in The Wall Street Journal that the Vance, the Trump-Vance campaign has yet to produce a single Ohio pet owner who’ mourning Fluffy or Fido, who was barbecued by Haitians. And I think the larger point that Rove was making is a valid one, which is” with less than 45 days, there’s simply no time to waste on things like this when your job is to drive home the overriding failures of the, you know, inflation and the border crisis.” he added.
“And, but I just want to note that Republican Governor Mike DeWine says he told Vance that these allegations were garbage, and yet the, Trump’s running mate seems to keep repeating them,” Kurtz said.
“You know, in that clip you played with Dana Bash, you heard Vance say he. if he has to create, then he’s going to do it to raise the larger point. But I would argue to you, Howie, that what Vance created was a distraction from the real crisis hitting Springfield. I’ve covered this issue pretty extensively, interviewed the Ohio attorney general, who’s looking at suing the government because of the Biden-Harris controversial C, H and V program that’s brought over 200,000 Haitians into the U.S. since last year.” Jenkins said.
“Springfield’s a population of 60,000, 20,000 Haitians are there. And so the argument there is they can’t sustain it, but yet they’re talking now about whether or not pets are getting eaten, which is, I think, a distraction,” he added.
“But does it in the end focus media attention on immigration in a way that benefits the Trump ticket?” Kurtz said.
“Not when it’s not being taken seriously. And you can’t argue that we’re putting a spotlight with such little time left on how things like this program, in bringing in these Haitians to communities like Springfield, needs to be reversed, which is the argument that Vance should be making. Instead, it’s the cat memes and the dog memes,” Jenkins concluded.
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