JD Vance almost gave the game away. In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, the Republican vice presidential candidate came close to acknowledging that rumors about Haitian migrants eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, are completely fabricated — and then backtracked, saying the rumors are true after all.

“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,” Vance said. When Bash asked him to clarify whether he created the story, Vance made an about-face, claiming he had heard “firsthand accounts” from his constituents. “I say that we’re creating a story meaning that we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” Vance continued. “I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming in Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’ policies. Her policies did that, but yes, we created the actual focus.”

Right-wing influencers and content creators have profited off their posts about Springfield, while politicians like Vance have used the rumors to underscore a broader political point. Vance’s goal is to keep attention on Springfield — and to continue to paint the city and its residents as victims of a supposedly open border. The goal isn’t just to demonize Haitian migrants but to create a narrative of a community under siege, echoing an increasingly popular right-wing conspiracy theory about an elite Democratic plot to “replace” white Americans with migrants of color. Linking to a graph claiming that Haitian migrants were resettling in conservative states, Elon Musk — no stranger to the “great replacement” theory — implied that Democrats were overseeing “massive voter importation to make swing states permanently blue and turn America into a one-party state.”

A day before he went on CNN, Vance claimed that, despite the media’s claims that the rumors about Haitians were baseless, the story “turned out to have merit.” That supposed merit came from a post published by Manhattan Institute fellow and right-wing operative Christopher Rufo, who obtained a video that, he said, depicted African migrants grilling cats in Dayton, Ohio. The video has been disputed, and several people have noted that the animal on the grill appears to have six legs and is more likely to be three chickens than a mutated cat.

“To be clear: this single incident does not confirm every particularity of Trump’s statement,” Rufo wrote. “But it does break the general narrative peddled by the establishment media and its ‘fact checkers,’ who insisted that this has never happened, and that any suggestion otherwise is somehow an expression of racism. It takes only a single exception, however, to falsify a hypothesis, and the logical next step, for any honest broker, is to ask if it is happening more often, and elsewhere.”

Vance, Rufo, and their allies are saying two things at once: the racist rumors about Haitian migrants in Springfield may be untrue, but the fact that Springfield is being overrun with Haitian migrants is irrefutable; and also, the rumors are true because Vance’s constituents said so. This isn’t the first time Vance has tried to have it both ways. Vance previously claimed the rumor was based on calls he’d gotten from constituents before acknowledging the possibility “that all of these rumors will turn out to be false” and pivoting to what he claims is the real story the media is ignoring in Springfield. 

Except, as we’ve explained before, the supposedly “real” narrative Vance is pushing about Haitian migrants in Springfield is also untrue. During the CNN interview, Vance said Harris “allowed 20,000 Haitian migrants to get dropped into a small Ohio town,” implying that Springfield’s growing Haitian community was the result of a coordinated campaign by Harris and President Joe Biden. Even the term “migrants” implies that the Haitians who have recently moved to Springfield did so shortly after crossing the border. In fact, according to reports from publications, including The New York Times, they’ve largely relocated to Springfield from other states, including Florida and Georgia — and were drawn there by word of mouth, not because of some federal recruitment scheme. On a recent episode of Vox’s Today, Explained, I discussed how these more insidious rumors fuel the great replacement conspiracy theory.

And as Bash pointed out, this is all putting Springfield residents — Vance’s constituents — at risk. Government buildings have received a spate of bomb threats since the rumor about Haitian migrants in Springfield went viral. Most recently, two elementary schools in Springfield were evacuated Monday after receiving threats, and two local colleges moved to virtual learning Monday for the same reason, CNN reports. Per Reuters, the FBI is looking into the threats. The city canceled its annual CultureFest, slated for September 27th and 28th, to “prevent any potential risks to attendees, staff, vendors, and volunteers.”

It’s worth emphasizing that all of this began with a handful of right-wing influencers’ posts on X — which were not only boosted by the platform’s algorithm and CEO but also amplified by Vance and former President Donald Trump on the debate stage. Instead of being contained to a small vitriolic corner of the internet, the racist memes about Haitians have spilled out of the far-right echo chamber and are putting real people in danger.