Donald Trump‘s presidential running mate, Senator JD Vance, has been attacked for taking his home state to a “slimy new low” in an op-ed published by an Ohio newspaper.
Vance “took Ohio to a slimy new low with lie about immigrants,” reads the headline of the op-ed written by columnist Thomas Suddes on The Columbus Dispatch‘s website. The op-ed was also published on cleveland.com.
It comes after the city of Springfield, Ohio, was thrust into the national spotlight after Vance falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in the city were abducting and eating cats and dogs, which Trump repeated during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
The city hall, several schools and other buildings were forced to evacuate earlier in September after the city was inundated by bomb threats.
Republican vice presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) speaks to a crowd during a rally at the Berks County Fairgrounds on September 21, 2024 in Leesport, Pennsylvania. Vance has been accused of taking Ohio to a “slimy new low” in an op-ed published by an Ohio newspaper.
Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images
Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who has denounced the debunked rumors, confirmed state police will be stationed at schools following the threats, which he said were determined to be hoaxes. DeWine said some had come from overseas, but he declined to name the country.
Trump and Vance have nevertheless doubled down on their claims.
“I challenge you to go to Springfield, Ohio which has been overwhelmed by 20,000 Haitians,” Vance said during a rally at the weekend. “Go to any community that has been overwhelmed by Kamala Harris’ illegal alien policies and tell me that these are stories made up by politicians.”
In his op-ed, Suddes wrote that Vance’s attacks on “Haitian-born people who now live in the United States—notably, in Clark County’s Springfield—are among the slimiest political maneuvers undertaken in living memory by an Ohio officeholder.”
It is “rivaled only by the demonization in 1986 of HIV-positive Ohioans by four-term Republican former Gov. James A. Rhodes in a failed comeback bid.”
Newsweek has contacted Vance’s office and the Trump-Vance campaign for comment via email. Suddes, who teaches at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, has been contacted via email.
Suddes suggests in his op-ed that Vance’s attacks could be part of a “long-game bet” to become president if 78-year-old Trump wins in November, but dies during his second term.
“With that office at stake, defaming Haitian migrants and disrupting (thanks to haters’ threats) the lives of the 58,000 people who live in Springfield, are easy wagers to place with a presidency in play as the sweepstakes,” Suddes wrote.
He added that Vance’s vice presidential campaign “antics won’t have aged well when biographers and historians look back at 2024’s Trump-Vance ticket and Vance’s increasingly demagogic claims.”
Suddes also noted that Ohio ranked second in the nation in the Humane Society’s “Horrible Hundred” report that detailed violations and concerns at 100 puppy mills across the country and that lawmakers had approved legislation in 2016 that relaxed regulations on how pet stores acquire animals.
Ohio is “in fact heartless in forbidding communities to regulate puppy sales,” he wrote. “That’s the state’s real animal-welfare challenge—not the brazen lies promoted by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance about Ohio newcomers eating companion animals.”
