J“The American media completely ignored this topic until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” D. Vance complained last Sunday, taking the court on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
But it’s not just a meme, countered interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice presidential nominee delivered a striking response: “If I have to create a story to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then I’m going to do that, Dana. Because you’re completely leaving Kamala Harris alone.”
If there was ever a case for saying the quiet parts out loud, Vance has mastered the technique to perfection: The cat meme he was referring to stemmed from an unfounded rumor that legal Haitian immigrants in his hometown of Ohio were eating their pets, a rumor that led to bomb threats and evacuations of schools and government buildings in Springfield.
But Vance’s willingness to “invent a story” to gain attention ahead of the November election suggests a new frontier in a post-truth America, where lies are no longer spread subtly but brazenly flaunted as a tactic to garner political support and stoke social unrest.
Some commentators have drawn similarities to when Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts” on another Sunday political show in 2017, when she sought to defend then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s false statements about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration.
“This is a logical extension of what the same campaign once called ‘alternative facts,'” said Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella. “This is clearly a long-term mission statement, not just a random comment.”
“Their strategy is to say anything, fabricate anything, and concoct false narratives to distract from the very real consequences of their radical and extreme policies that are far removed from the mainstream interests of the American people. They think they have a better chance of winning by making up crazy stories about people eating pets than by subsequently discussing the consequences of their proposed policies.”
Corruption in politics is nothing new, from President Richard Nixon’s cover-up of the Watergate scandal to the false claims of weapons of mass destruction used as a pretext for the Iraq War. In 2004, The New York Times Magazine quoted an anonymous official in the George W. Bush administration as saying, “We are now an empire, and as we act, we create our own reality.”
That was fertile ground for Trump, who for years exaggerated his wealth and philanthropy, misled the public about ventures like Trump University, even lied about his own height and weight, and, beginning in 2011, led the way in promoting the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to be U.S. president.
Since taking office, President Trump has made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his four years in the White House, according to a tally by The Washington Post. He most notably claimed to have presided over the largest tax cuts in history (when in fact President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were larger) and downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, repeatedly telling Americans it would soon “go away.”
But perhaps the biggest lie of all came on election night in 2020, when Trump claimed victory. He stuck to this position, alleging that the election was “stolen” from widespread voter fraud, which ultimately led to the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He has since recast the rioters as martyrs and “patriots.”
Trump’s falsehoods have perhaps accelerated as he seeks the White House for a third consecutive year: According to a fact-check conducted by CNN, Trump made more than 30 false claims during the presidential debate with Joe Biden in Atlanta, but Biden’s poor performance helped them escape rigorous scrutiny.
During his debate with Harris in Philadelphia, Trump made false claims about inflation, immigration, tariffs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s role in the Jan. 6 election and the criminal proceedings against Joe Biden, and public support for repealing constitutional abortion rights.
Amazingly, he also plucked a racist Springfield conspiracy theory from the Internet’s fever morass and gave it a national platform in front of tens of millions of viewers, saying, “In Springfield, they’re eating dogs. The people who come there are eating cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there.”
It wasn’t the first time that night that an ABC News host was forced to step in to fact-check. There is no evidence to support such claims. The Wall Street Journal reported that on the day Vance first spread the right-wing rumor, the mayor of Springfield told his office that the rumor was unfounded.
Vance’s team submitted a police report to the Journal in which a resident claimed her cat may have been stolen by a Haitian neighbor, but when a Journal reporter tracked down the resident, it turned out the cat had been in the basement all along, and the resident apologized to the neighbor.
Yet Trump and Vance continued to knowingly lie at campaign rallies, undeterred by warnings from the White House that they could incite ugly backlash against Haitians in Springfield, and Vance’s shocking admission that he made up lies and bragged about them.
Days after the CNN interview, Vance acknowledged that he hadn’t fact-checked the residents’ claims about their pets, but continued to defend his comments: “The media has a responsibility to fact-check,” he said at a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, trying to shift the blame.
“What J.D. Vance is saying is that facts don’t matter and that I’m not at all ashamed of spreading false stories,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster.
“This highlights just how addicted Trump, Vance and the MAGA movement are to fake internet memes, and how unshakeable their attachment is to them. They stick with them even when they’re refuted. This is dangerous, because no matter how much evidence we can present, no matter how dangerous the lies turn out to be, they’re not going to back down.”
Sykes warned: “They’re going to keep up the pressure. Now apply that to what happens in November, to the election results. It could be anything.”
On Saturday, Vance will appear in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on the former Fox News host’s live tour with conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Nazi apologist and Holocaust denier Daryl Cooper on his podcast, a decision that has been roundly criticized by Jewish lawmakers.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign was accompanied by far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who attended the debate and then attended a ceremony in New York the following day marking the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Loomer, who has 1.2 million followers on the social media platform X, has previously suggested that 9/11 was an inside job. At a rally in Las Vegas, Trump said he heard Harris use a secret earpiece during the debate, a baseless conspiracy theory that Loomer spread on X.
Loomer also posted on X that if Harris, who is of Indian descent, wins the election, “the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be delivered via a call center.” Even far-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene condemned the remarks as racist.
Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, sees Loomer as a symptom, not a cause. “If you take a quick look at the list of conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has supported or promoted, you’ll be astonished at how long it is,” he says. “Laura Loomer is not making Donald Trump into a conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump has been a conspiracy theorist for many years. He’s now looking for people to satisfy and justify his darker impulses.”
There’s another reason why Trump and Vance feel exonerated: Their lies are born out of and legitimized by a right-wing media ecosystem that includes Twitter, a social network owned by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has supported Trump, hosted an interview with him and sought to portray his critics as enemies of free speech.
Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the watchdog group Media Matters for America, said: “This is the election of the right-wing media. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are both individuals steeped in the far-right information ecosystem, who embrace that complete lack of standards and are willing to use any means necessary to achieve their ends of political gain and political victory. What we’re seeing here is how these lies can get completely out of control. Springfield, Ohio, is experiencing real chaos right now.”
Entering the final stages of the election, and facing possible imprisonment if he loses, Trump is outdoing himself with a string of falsehoods. On Thursday, CNN fact checkers compiled a list of “12 completely fabricated things” Trump has said in the past month, including that Harris would reinstitute military conscription, that schools would allow children to undergo gender reassignment surgery without their parents’ knowledge, and that Harris would negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop an invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said, “There’s nothing worse than a desperate man. There’s nothing worse than a desperate racist who can’t control the African-American woman in front of him. He can’t control the changing circumstances around him, which is the escalation of the presidential election.”
“The fact that Republicans are now coming out against a second term for Trump and paving the way for Democrats to support him because Donald Trump is such a bad and dangerous person, he can’t control what people are saying about him. When he can’t control that, he becomes even more dangerous and more desperate. You’re going to see more of this between now and November, so you need to be aware of that.”
