Vance magnifies false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance speaks to reporters in front of the border wall with Mexico in San Diego, Calif., Sep. 06, 2024. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance on Monday magnified a false claim that Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
In a post on X, Vance published a video of himself at a July Senate Banking Committee hearing, reading a letter from Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck about the city’s challenges in keeping up with housing for the growing Haitian immigrant population.
In the post, Vance pushed the false claim that Haitian immigrants are kidnapping and eating people’s pets in Springfield.
“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” Vance wrote on X. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he asked, a term that Republicans have attempted to tag Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris with, although she has denied holding that role.
But Heck debunked those claims about Springfield in a statement to ABC News.
“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” Heck said in his statement.
“Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic,” Heck said.
According to the Springfield News-Sun, the Springfield Police Department has not received any reports of pets being stolen and eaten.
The false claim that immigrants are targeting people’s pets stemmed from a social media posting originally from a Springfield Facebook group that went viral, where the poster wrote that their neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat. The poster went on to make an unsubstantiated claim of Haitians allegedly taking the cat for food.
The post was picked up by people on social media, including rightwing activist Turning Points’ Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk.
Springfield, Ohio, has been at the center of several rumors concerning Haitian immigrants. The city even created a webpage debunking some claims.
Migrants have been drawn to the region because of low cost of living and work opportunities, the city says on its site. The city estimates there are around 12,000 to 15,000 immigrants living in the county, and that the rapid rise in population has strained housing, health care, and school resources. But the city also says that the migrants are in the country legally and that many are recipients of Temporary Protected Status from the federal government.
On Monday, Ohio Attorney General David Yost said the population in Springfield has grown by more than a third. In a statement, he announced he’s directing his office to “research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”
“The problem is not migrants, it is way, way too many migrants in a short period of time,” Yost said in his statement. “The problem is a massive increase in the population without any communication or assistance from the federal government.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — With just 36 days until Election Day, the campaign trail is taking a sharp turn toward how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and its aftermath.
It’s also one day before the vice presidential debate on Tuesday.
Here’s how the news is developing.
Harris to tour Helene damage in Georgia Wednesday
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Georgia Wednesday, to tour areas that were hardest hit by Hurricane Helene last week, her office said.
“The Vice President will also provide updates on Federal actions that are being taken to support emergency response and recovery efforts in Georgia and several other states throughout the southeast,” her office said in a statement.
The tour will be at the same time that President Joe Biden visits areas in the Carolinas that were struck hardest by the storm.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
Trump claims Musk will help Helene victims
Standing in front of a destroyed furniture store in Valdosta, Georgia, former President Donald Trump claimed he’s requested help from Elon Musk and will be traveling to North Carolina when conditions clear.
“They don’t have communication. … I just spoke to Elon,” he said. “We want to get Starlink hooked up because they have no communication whatsoever. And Elon will always come through.”
“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election. But in a time like this when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters,” Trump said before later suggesting the Biden-Harris administration wasn’t doing enough and falsely claiming that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t get ahold of the president.
–ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
Fact check: Biden and Georgia’s governor have spoken
Trump incorrectly claimed that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and President Joe Biden haven’t been in touch since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the Southeast, making clear that his already controversial visit to the hard-hit state is a political one.
“I spoke with, for a couple hours, leaders yesterday affected by the hurricane,” Biden said Monday morning. “Governor Kemp of Georgia, Governor Cooper of North Carolina, county officials in the Big Bend region of Florida and other leaders in South Carolina and Tennessee.”
Kemp on Monday acknowledged the call with Biden and said he and Harris had been trying to speak.
–ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Molly Nagle
Trump claims Biden and Harris not responding to Georgia disaster
Trump claimed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is having a hard time getting President Joe Biden on the phone and that the federal government is being unresponsive after Hurricane Helene wrecked the parts of the state.
“The Vice President, she’s out some place campaigning and looking for money,” Trump said after landing in Valdosta, Georgia. “They have to be focused over here.”
Biden approved Kemp’s request for an emergency declaration on Thursday and Harris canceled campaign events Monday to return to Washington for a briefing on the storm and the federal response.
NC leaders ask politicians to stay away
Ahead of his visit to Valdosta, Georgia, Trump posted to Truth Social that he will pay his respects to the community, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene, and bring aid.
Trump added that he was going to stop by damaged communities in North Carolina too, but determined it would be too burdensome on local officials.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents Asheville, North Carolina, told ABC Contributing Political Correspondent Rachael Bade on Sunday night that photo-ops were not welcome. Cooper even asked President Joe Biden and Harris to please not visit the state right now.
–ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
New York Times endorses Harris
The New York Times endorsed Harris for president in an editorial published Monday morning, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” and later “the only choice.”
“As a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated care, competence and an unwavering commitment to the Constitution, Ms. Harris stands alone in this race,” the Times’ editorial board wrote. “She may not be the perfect candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry about our government’s failures to fix what’s broken — from our immigration system to public schools to housing costs to gun violence. Yet we urge Americans to contrast Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s.”
–ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
Trump heads to Georgia devastation, Harris cancels campaign events and heads to DC for FEMA briefing
Trump is scheduled to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday amid storm wreckage in the area.
Trump, who has been criticizing Harris for not visiting communities damaged by Hurricane Helene, will receive a briefing on the damage from the hurricane, help distribute relief supplies and deliver campaign remarks at a local furniture store in Valdosta, the campaign announced on Sunday.
Harris, meanwhile, is canceling her campaign events and heading back from Las Vegas to get a briefing at FEMA headquarters in Washington on what her campaign says are the “ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene and the federal actions being taken to support emergency response and recovery efforts across several states.”
Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, at Arlington National Cemetery on August 26, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Arlington National Cemetery has confirmed to ABC News that during former President Donald Trump’s visit on Monday, an “incident” related to photos being taken at the site occurred, leading to a report being filed.
When contacted by ABC News on Tuesday night, a representative for the Arlington National Cemetery released a statement that confirmed an “incident” but didn’t provide specifics.
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign. Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants. We can confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed,” the statement read.
Trump campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, posted on X what he said was proof of the team’s approval to have an official photographer and videographer outside the main press pool.
“Only former President Trump may have an official photographer and/or videographer outside of the main media pool,” a screengrab of what appears to be an access guideline posted by Cheung reads. However, it should be noted that campaign officials — not professionals — were also taking photos and videos of the day’s events.
Cheung also claimed on Tuesday night after the news broke that, “There was no physical altercation as described [by some reports], and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made” in a statement to ABC News.
Trump campaign staffers posted multiple pictures and videos of Trump visiting Arlington Cemetery, including from what appears to be Section 60, using the moment to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris’ absence. Trump was at the cemetery on the third anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate during the withdrawal from Afghanistan to pay tribute to the 13 U.S. Service members killed in the incident.
In one video posted by Trump campaign’s senior adviser Chris LaCivita, Trump can be seen laying flowers on the grave of Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, who died in the attack. LaCivita wrote in the post that Trump was speaking on the phone with Knauss’ family, who couldn’t make it to the ceremony on Monday.
Multiple other Trump campaign staffers posted photos from there, and some of the images were then shared by the Trump campaign on their official X account.
Prior to the event, the cemetery had been explicit in its rule that no Trump activity could be filmed during his visit to Section 60.
Monday’s press pool note read: “The family visit to Section 60 following the wreath laying is private and at their explicit request, there will be NO coverage at that location. Your POOL will wait inside the press van during this visit. POOL will then be taken to an unknown location for an OTR stop to round out the morning.”
In a statement to ABC News, LaCivita, a combat-wounded Marine, stressed that Trump “was there on the invitation of the Abbey Gate Gold Star Families to honor their loved ones who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their country,” calling the individual who attempted to block Trump campaign officials “despicable.”
(WASHINGTON) — Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance defended his past comments on women and families without children, the Trump campaign’s proposals to deport undocumented immigrants and more in a wide-ranging interview with “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, which airs in full on Sunday morning.
Despite the race tightening in recent weeks as Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the Democratic ticket, the Ohio senator emphasized that he and Trump are “extremely confident” in their chances of winning the election.
“I think we’re going to win. I also think that we have to work as hard as possible for the remainder of the election to try to persuade Americans to vote for us,” Vance told Karl. “That’s the name of the game.”
Vance elaborates on ‘pro-family’ views
The senator has come under fire for repeated comments made about childless Americans, including one during an interview in July 2021 with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson where Vance described leading Democrats including Harris as “childless cat ladies.”
In a speech before a conservative group, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which preceded that interview, Vance also suggested that people with children should have extra votes.
“The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds, but let’s do this instead,” Vance said in the speech. “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power.”
Vance told Karl his notion was a “thought experiment” in response to Democratic proposals to allow younger voters, and not a policy stance.
“Do I regret saying it? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign has, frankly, distorted what I said,” he said. “They turn this into a policy proposal that I never made. … I said, I want us to be more pro-family, and I do want us to be more pro-family.”
Vance added there are “policy positions behind my view that the country should become more pro-family.” He went on to talk about the economic struggles that families are facing, citing the increased cost of goods, rising medical bills and other costs.
The senator said that he and Trump have a plan to lower the cost of housing and food but didn’t provide details during the interview.
Trump said in an interview with Fox News last week that his solution to bringing down costs was, “We’re gonna drill, baby, drill.”
Trump has also advocated for more tariffs and tax cuts as part of his economic policies.
Vance responds to mass deportation plan: ‘Let’s start with 1 million’
The senator brought up the ongoing migrant crisis and again blamed Harris and the Biden administration’s policies, such as ending “Remain in Mexico.”
When asked how he and Trump would accomplish their stated goal of mass deporting as many as 20 million immigrants – a proposal experts previously told ABC News would be a “nightmare” — Vance said they would take a “sequential approach.”
“I mean do you go knock on doors and ask people for their papers? What do you do,” Karl asked.
“You start with what’s achievable,” Vance said. “I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem.”
“I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million. That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there,” Vance said.
Vance agrees with Trump that VP picks don’t matter to most voters During an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago last month, and just a short time after Trump announced Vance as his running mate, the former president raised some eyebrows when asked whether Vance would be ready to be president “on Day 1” if needed.
“You can have a vice president who’s outstanding in every way, and I think JD is, I think that all of them would’ve been, but you’re not voting that way. You’re voting for the president. You’re voting for me,” Trump said, without addressing whether Vance would be ready on “Day 1.”
In the interview with ABC News, Vance said he agreed with Trump’s view.
“They’re voting for Donald Trump or for Kamala Harris, not for JD or Tim Walz,” he said. “I also think that he’s right that the politics of this really don’t matter that much.”
However, Vance stressed he’s “absolutely” sure Trump is confident he could step up as a commander in chief if needed.
“What I think that he does believe because he made it the main focus of his vetting process, is, ‘Do I think this person can be president on day one if, God forbid, something happens? Yes,'” Vance said.
Vance repeats false claims about Tim Walz’s policies
During a rally in Montana on Friday night, Trump pushed falsehoods about Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz’s policies concerning transgender youth, accusing the Minnesota governor of signing “a law letting the state kidnap children to change their gender.”
Walz has signed legislation aimed at protecting the rights of transgender individuals to access gender-affirming care, which can include gender-affirming surgeries but also services like counseling and non-surgical medical procedures like hormone therapy and puberty suppressants. The law does not allow what Trump claimed.
Vance said he didn’t fully watch the late-night rally but repeated some of those false claims in the interview with Karl, saying Walz “supported taking children away from their parents if the parents don’t consent to gender reassignment.”
He referenced Walz’s recent statement at a rally accusing Republicans of not “minding their own damn business.”
“One way of minding your own damn business, Jon, is to not try to take my children away from me … if I have different world views than you.”
Karl pushed back, calling the “kidnapping” characterization “crazy.”
The April 2023 law that Walz signed in the wake of other states curtailing or banning access to gender-affirming care has been mischaracterized by Republicans.
The Minnesota law protects patients who come to the state to receive gender-affirming health care, even if the patients live in a state where such care is illegal. The law also specifically allows the state’s courts to assume “temporary emergency jurisdiction” in cross-state child custody disputes where a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming care and is in Minnesota to do so.
The executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy group OutFront told The Washington Post that under the law, courts can settle parental disputes over whether their child should get this care, but it doesn’t result in the parent against such care losing custody of their child.
Vance pushes back on white supremacist Trump once dined with who recently insulted his wife’s race
Karl also asked Vance about a racist attack targeting his wife, Usha, from white nationalist live-streamer, Nick Fuentes, who Trump dined with in November 2022.
In a recent livestream, Fuentes said, “What kind of man marries somebody named Usha Clearly, he doesn’t value his racial identity.”
“My attitude to these people attacking my wife is, she’s beautiful, she’s smart. What kind of man marries Usha A very smart man and very lucky man,” Vance said of his wife during the ABC News interview. “If these guys want to attack me or attack my views, my policy views, [or] my personality, come after me. But don’t attack my wife. She’s out of your league.”
Trump faced significant blowback for dining with Fuentes, along with rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) back in November 2022 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. At the time, Trump said he did not know who Fuentes was and that he was brought to the dinner by Ye. In a statement given exclusively to Fox News Digital, Trump said, “I had no idea what his views were, and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted.”
But the former president has not denounced Fuentes’ white nationalist views beyond that, or the recent comments about Usha Vance.
In the interview, Vance contended Trump had “issued plenty of condemnations,” and did not question the former president’s dinner with Fuentes.
“The one thing I like about Donald Trump, Jon, is that he actually will talk to anybody. But just because you talk to somebody doesn’t mean you endorse their views,” Vance said, adding that Trump has been close and friendly with his family.
ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan contributed to this report.
