After being called out for spreading lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance doubled down over the weekend. Strikingly, he didn’t do this through weasel words or by pointing to some undiscovered set of evidence. Instead, he appeared to defend the idea that fabricating facts to support his worldview is appropriate. It was a startling confession that helps distill the corrosive nihilism of the MAGA worldview.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m gonna do,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash, “because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
Vance’s admission that he’s okay “creating” the story gets to the heart of MAGA philosophy: Truth is subordinate to the pursuit of power.
That exchange between Bash and Vance had begun with the anchor repeatedly pointing out that there was no evidence behind Vance’s claims about illegal Haitian immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets or eating geese taken from public parks. Among other things, Bash mentioned that Vance boosted a video on X claiming to show immigrants cooking cats in Dayton, Ohio. That video is unsourced, uncorroborated by evidence, was reportedly recorded somewhere other than Springfield, and was published by Christopher Rufo, a right-wing activist who specializes in manufacturing narratives about left-wing extremism. Rufo had offered a $5,000 bounty for evidence of the pet-eating slander. (Additionally, Dayton’s police chief called the claim “outlandish” and stated there was no evidence to support it.)
When Bash pressed Vance to “affirmatively say” that the claim was a “rumor that has no basis with evidence,” Vance called it “the firsthand account” of his constituents. Of course, an alleged phone call from someone claiming to be a witness to an act is not evidence. But then Vance made that startling admission. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” he said, before defending the imperative to “create stories” to get the media to pay attention.
“You just said that this is a story that you created,” Bash said.
What followed was Vance’s unconvincing attempt to clean up what he’d just admitted to. “We are creating — Dana, it comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents. I say that we’re ‘creating a story’ meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it. I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield, thanks to Kamala Harris’ policies. Her policies did that but, yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about the story.”
Vance downplayed his incendiary tall tales about immigrant enclaves preying on people’s pets — which have resulted in dozens of bomb threats in Springfield — as a “meme.” And he essentially argued that he has no obligation to make sure stories he’s fed are true if it advances his narrative that immigrants are undesirable.
Vance’s admission that he’s okay “creating” the story gets to the heart of MAGA philosophy: Truth is subordinate to the pursuit of power. One begins with a premise (illegal immigration is harmful) and then floods the zone with any claims that seems to support that premise, with no regard to whether they’re true. It’s reminiscent of former Trump adviser Kellyane Conway’s creating the phrase “alternative facts” to defend Trump’s lies about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Never mind that most Haitian residents in Springfield are there legally and face no accusations of unusual behavior. Vance is proposing ends-justify-the-means reasoning in which feelings and political goals trump the pesky details of reality.
Even Trump doesn’t so baldly admit that he’s lying. His style is to never admit to his disregard for the truth. Meanwhile, Vance openly confesses to the nihilism behind MAGA falsehoods as a practical mode of activism. It’s impossible to run an enlightened democratic society if the leaders of a major political party just make things up to make it easier to achieve whatever ends they desire.
The outrage isn’t just that Vance believes he has license to fabricate facts to support his and Trump’s ideology. In this case, the outrage is also the particular fiction they crafted. By making up stories about Haitians eating their neighbors’ pets, they seek to dehumanize immigrants by portraying them as savage, criminal and parasitic. It’s an obviously racialized narrative that fits in with Trump’s fascistic rhetoric about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” If Vance and Trump spoke truthfully about immigrants, then they’d have a much harder time convincing the public they represent an existential threat to the country.
In a previous political era, politicians caught in the act of such blatant fabulism would make a serious effort to either evade responsibility for the lie or apologize and move on. But in this political era, MAGA politicians simply dig in their heels, by not only continuing to repeat the lies, but also by defending lying as something that’s necessary and virtuous.
Leave a Reply