Earlier this month, a Springfield resident published a since-deleted post to a private local Facebook group spreading “vague, third hand gossip” about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in the area. 

The internet rumor spread to X on September 5 and spiraled through the right-wing media apparatus for days. Then on the morning of September 9, Vance, who is extremely online, promoted the claims on X, triggering a slew of supportive coverage from right-wing media.

Springfield’s city manager told Vance’s staffer such claims were “baseless” soon after, the Journal reported. Vance kept his post up and added another the next day in which he acknowledged that he was promoting “rumors” that may “turn out to be false,” but nonetheless urged his supporters to “keep the cat memes flowing.”

That night Donald Trump cited what his running mate had acknowledged were “rumors” that his office had been informed were baseless at a presidential debate before an estimated television audience of nearly 70 million Americans. 

The former president, who shares the evidentiary standards of the average denizen of right-wing fever swamps, told the public that Democrats had allowed “millions and millions of people to come into our country” and that “in Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live there.”

ABC News moderator David Muir responded by telling Trump what he could have learned from speaking to his running mate’s staff if he were marginally interested in saying true things.

“ABC News reached out to the city manager there,” Muir said. “He told us ‘there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.’”

This mild rebuttal of what Trump’s running mate had publicly called a “rumor” which could be false — along with a handful of similar fact-checks of right-wing media nonsense Trump promoted that night — triggered a massive right-wing freakout targeting ABC. 

Over the following days, Trump and his allies called for government retribution against the network and its parent company and even criminal charges, while promoting absurdly thin claims about an “ABC whistleblower” who was exposing the purportedly rigged debate.

Meanwhile, Trump’s right-wing propagandists scrounged for evidence even vaguely resembling the initial claims which immediately collapsed under scrutiny, including a photo purportedly showing a Haitian immigrant carrying a dead goose to eat, a video purportedly showing a cat being grilled in neighboring Dayton, Ohio, false claims that Haitians were causing an increase in “communicable diseases like HIV and TB,” and an attack on Haitian immigrants in Pennsylvania.

Springfield’s community has experienced significant disruption since Vance and Trump took a rumor from the right-wing fever swamps, gave it a national audience, and mired the city in a ridiculous national debate. 

Local schools, colleges, churches, and government buildings have suffered bomb threats that resulted in evacuations. The Proud Boys, a violent Trumpist gang, marched through the streets, while “fliers from a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan” circulated. Haitian residents say they fear for their safety and are keeping their children home from school. 

Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine publicly urged Trump and Vance to end their “very hurtful” attacks on Haitian immigrants. Springfield’s mayor Rob Rue, also a Republican, added that "It would be helpful if they understood the weight of their words and how they could harm a community like ours.”

But Vance, Trump, and their right-wing media allies are undeterred. Their aim, as Vance admitted in a Sunday interview, is to “create stories” by uplifting bullshit in order to drive media attention to the purported horrors of immigrants (and presumably away from covering unpopular aspects of their agenda, like restricting abortion, raising grocery prices, and rolling back protections on health coverage for preexisting conditions). 

On Tuesday, he denied any sense of responsibility for his actions and their consequences.

“A woman who was behind an early Facebook post about the Haitian migrants in Springfield has now apologized for spreading false rumors,” a reporter told Vance at a Q & A during a rally in Wisconsin. “You say that you have a responsibility to share what your constituents tell you, but don’t you also have a responsibility to fact-check them first?”

“I think the media has a responsibility to fact-check the residents of Springfeild, not lie about them,” Vance replied, to cheers from the crowd. “I actually think this is really interesting, and I’ve learned a lot about the American media over the last week, and none of it is good.”

Vance went on to claim that his office had heard the story about pets from “multiple people” and the media has descended on the town and engaged in “bullying on an industrial scale” that he called “disgraceful.”

Vance’s office, meanwhile, had provided the Journal with one new piece of evidence, “a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors,” which instantly dissolved when the paper went about trying to “fact-check” it.

“But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement,” the Journal reported on Wednesday. 

“Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.”

Don’t expect similar apologies from Vance, Trump, or any of the right-wing propagandists peddling this story.