- Sen. JD Vance's staff reportedly sent evidence of a possible cat-napping to the Wall Street Journal.
- Vance has defended his role in pushing rumors that Haitian migrants are eating people's pets in a small town.
- The publication found the cat in question was perfectly fine.
Sen. JD Vance's staff forwarded evidence that might have added legitimacy to the wild and racist rumors that Haitian migrants were eating people's pets in the small town of Springfield, Ohio.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a spokesperson for the Republican vice presidential nominee pointed to a police report that a local resident filed alleging their Haitian neighbors might have stolen her cat. But when a reporter checked out the situation, they found an apologetic woman with a cat, Miss Sassy, that was safe and sound.
Anna Kilgore, the resident in question, who was wearing pro-Trump gear, told the Journal reporter that her missing cat had turned up a few days after she filed the police report. Kilgore said she later apologized to the neighbors she had accused, with the help of a translation app.
The episode underlines how online rumors and memes have upended life in the small town, a situation that further escalated after former President Donald Trump said during the presidential debate, "They're eating, the pets of the people that live there."
Vance, who represents Ohio in the US Senate, has strongly defended his role in pushing the debunked theories. He told CNN on Sunday that he had been able to "create" attention on the influx of Haitians to Springfield in recent years by pushing memes about people eating pets.
"The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes," Vance told CNN's Dana Bash. "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 going to do."
When Bash followed up, Vance said that claims originated with his from his own constituents. A spokesperson for the senator echoed that response in a statement to Business Insider.
"Senator Vance has received countless messages from residents of Springfield on the disastrous effects Kamala Harris's immigration policies have created for their hometown: a shortage of affordable housing, stressed public resources, declining public safety, and spikes in communicable disease," a Vance spokesperson said in a statement. "It's shameful that the media is ignoring these real concerns while purposely twisting Senator Vance's words."
Springfield city manager Bryan Heck told the Journal that on September 9 an unnamed member of Vance's staff reached out to discuss the legitimacy of the pet eating stories.
"He asked point-blank, 'Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?'" Heck told the publication. "I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless."
Vance had already tweeted about the subject. Later, Trump would post memes of armed cats on Truth Social before the entire bizarre situation came to a head when over 67 million Americans heard Trump discuss it during the debate.
