The Biggest Lie of the Year? Trump and Vance

Biggest Liars of the Year

From Politifact:

....To get media attention, then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance acknowledged, sometimes “I have to create stories.”

And so, with a brazen disregard for facts, Donald Trump and his running mate repeatedly peddled a created story that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants were eating pet dogs and cats.

With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level.

“In Springfield, they're eating the dogs,” Trump said Sept. 10. “The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.”

City and county officials said repeatedly that it was not happening. Rebuttals did not diminish the consequences: Dozens of bomb threats at schools, grocery stores and government buildings....

After the threats subsided, some Haitians didn’t want to go in public or send their children to school. The police department sent an officer to protect churchgoers at a Haitian Creole Sunday afternoon mass. Haitian restaurant owners and schoolchildren heard taunts from people using Trump’s words.

"‘Dad, do we eat dogs at the house?’" Jacob Payen, a Haitian Community Alliance spokesperson and business owner, recalled his 7-year-old son asking.

The Haitian population in Springfield swelled since 2021 as people fled Haiti’s violence and instability. City officials estimated 12,000 to 20,000 Haitians had come to this city of about 58,000 residents in 2020, after hearing about jobs and low living costs. Most Haitians live in the U.S. legally under a temporary federal protection President Joe Biden extended....

Vance’s central role in fanning unwarranted attention on a city in the state he represents in the U.S. Senate caused resentment among some locals. "Vance threw us under the bus," said Rob Baker, a political science professor since 1987 at Springfield’s Wittenberg University.

....Trump increased his voter support in Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield, this year above what he garnered in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

In choosing the 2024 Lie of the Year, the claims by Vance and Trump about Haitians eating pets stood out. It was an absurd statement that Trump raised unprompted on the debate stage.

And neither Trump nor Vance stopped there. They stuck with the narrative for the rest of the campaign over objections of allies who debunked it and pleaded with them to let it go. When challenged by voters and interviewers, Trump said he heard it on TV; Vance said constituents had called his office with the claim.

"What am I supposed to do? Hang up the phone and tell them they’re a liar because the media doesn’t want me to talk about it?" Vance said in October.

Emboldened by Vance’s embrace of the rumor, Trump’s debate outburst cemented lasting consequences, stigmatizing a town and its residents in the name of campaign rage. For those reasons, Trump and Vance own the 2024 Lie of the Year....

Rob's comment:

Vance: "What am I supposed to do? Hang up the phone and tell them they’re a liar because the media doesn’t want me to talk about it?"

Surely even Vance isn't that dumb. He and Trump should have investigated the validity of the claim before using it. The Biggest Lie of the Year makes them The Biggest Liars of the Year.