September 16, 2024 02:38 PM UTC

Trump/Vance Campaign Following Heidi Ganahl Playbook

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• by: Colorado Pols

If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.

The Trump/Vance campaign for President/Vice President seems to be following this playbook one week after Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump was roundly mocked for saying in a debate with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were stealing people’s pets — cats, dogs, ducks, geese, etc. — and eating them:

But rather than letting this obvious lie fade away from the American consciousness, the Trump/Vance campaign seems to have decided that they are going to lean in HARD on the story — nevermind that it has been repeatedly debunked. Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance made the talk show rounds over the weekend in attempt to keep this story going while simultaneously acknowledging that it was all horseshit. On Sunday alone, Vance appeared on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan“; NBC’s “Meet the Press“; and in a long interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in which Vance quadrupled (quintupled?) down on the “immigrants eating pets” nonsense narrative.

As Philip Bump noted in a separate column for The Washington Post, the dishonesty was dripping from Vance’s soulless eyes:

Just about every part of Sen. JD Vance’s efforts on Sunday to defend his relentless fearmongering about Haitian immigrants was dishonest.

To hear Vance (R-Ohio) tell it — as he told CNN’s Dana Bash and NBC’s Kristen Welker in separate news show appearances — the senator and running mate to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was simply highlighting long-standing concerns that had been ignored by the media. But those concerns hadn’t been ignored, and his focus on the Ohio city of Springfield and its population that came from Haiti was demonstrably a function of the presidential campaign. Which, Vance admitted to Bash, was the point.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” Vance said, “then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.” 

Bash noted that Vance had just admitted that he “created” these stories, ones asserting (without reliable evidence) that the immigrants were eating people’s pets in an echo of long-standing racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. [Pols emphasis]

“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” Vance insisted. But, again, that’s not true.

Both Vance and Donald Trump, Jr. took to social media to allege that there was some sort of proof of their claims about pet-eating migrants, pointing as evidence to this ridiculous video on ‘X’ that offers no context or clue about what is actually happoening. As journalist Aaron Rupar noted on ‘X’:

This story is remarkably similar to an equally-absurd narrative that closed out the 2022 campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl in Colorado. Ganahl, you’ll recall, spent most of the last six weeks of her campaign talking about non-existent “furries” that were invading Colorado schools and forcing school administrators to cater to their cat-costumed whims.

Much like the silly “proof” that Vance and Trump, Jr. promoted over the weekend, the only “evidence” Ganahl’s campaign could provide about her “furry” concerns was this random picture of a costumed cat head that Team Heidi sent to 9News:

The main difference between these two bizarre turns in top-ticket races is that Vance seems to be acknowledging that his claims aren’t actually true; Ganahl, by contrast, went down with the furry ship and never even hinted at the absurdity of her efforts to create a last-minute controversy.

If any part of your campaign at all resembles the 2022 gubernatorial campaign of Heidi Ganahl — widely believed to be the worst statewide candidate/campaign in Colorado history — then you’re doing it wrong.