Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance said on Tuesday night that Republicans posting memes about Haitian migrants eating cats and ducks have forced the media to cover the impacts of the southern border crisis.
Republican nominee Donald Trump mentioned the unproven allegations about Haitian migrants killing and eating pet cats and ducks in the town, which has sparked memes among conservatives on social media. Vance told CNN host Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday night that his senatorial office has received reports of the phenomenon, and called on journalists to investigate the matter.
“First of all, city officials have not said it’s not true. They said they don’t have all the evidence,” Vance said. “We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground Kaitlan, with first hand and second hand reports saying this stuff is happening. So they, very clearly, meaning the people on the ground dealing with this, think it is happening, and I think that it’s for journalists to actually get on the ground and uncover this stuff for themselves when you have people on the ground saying ‘my pets are being abducted, or geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us.’ This is crazy stuff.”
Vance attacks the media for only starting to care about migrant crisis once GOP memed about cats pic.twitter.com/XVWDd8vlIx
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 11, 2024
Vance said the media largely ignored the negative impacts illegal migrants have had on local communities throughout the U.S., arguing the meme phenomenon on social media has forced them to start paying attention to the issue.
“I think it’s interesting, Kaitlan, that the media didn’t care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats, and that speaks to the media’s failure to care about what’s going on in these communities,” Vance said. “If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, then we’ll keep doing it because the media should care about what’s going on.”
Vance acknowledged in a Tuesday tweet that the allegations could be false, but mentioned reports of an 11-year-old boy in Springfield being killed in a bus accident allegedly at the hands of a Haitian migrant in August 2023. He called for the cat memes to continue in order to call out the crisis.
In short, don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots.
Keep the cat memes flowing.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 10, 2024
The allegations began when Springfield resident Anthony Harris alleged during a local city commission meeting in August that Haitian migrants are decapitating ducks in public parks and eating them.
“They’re in the park grabbing up ducks by [their] neck and cutting [their] head off and walking up with them and eating them,” Harris said.
Trump said during the debate that migrants are “eating” local residents’ pets, adding that Harris is “destroying this country.” The former president pushed back against ABC moderator David Muir’s fact-check, saying he has seen people on television making these allegations.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people who came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” Trump said.
The rumors escalated after bodycam footage went viral of 27-year-old Alexis Telia Ferrell, who was charged on Aug. 16 of stomping on a cat’s head and eating it in front of her neighbors in Canton, Ohio, according to Fox 12. Records indicate she is not Haitian or a migrant, according to the New York Post.
Karen Graves, a spokeswoman for Springfield, denied there being any “credible reports” of pets being eaten in their community, according to The New York Times. The city’s police division said it has not received any reports or notifications about pets being stolen or eaten, according to The Springfield-News Sun.
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