Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator JD Vance continues to stoke outrage against foreign-born members of his own constituency, sharing video footage with his 1.9 million social media followers that he claimed showed African migrants in Dayton, Ohio “eating cats” — but instead appears to show nothing more than poultry cooking on an outdoor grill.
“Kamala Harris and her media apparatchiks should be ashamed of themselves,” Vance posted Saturday on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. “Another ‘debunked’ story that turned out to have merit.”
Vance has claimed, falsely, in recent days that Haitians — who are not Africans — living in Springfield — a town of 58,000 which is not Dayton — were stealing, killing, and consuming their neighbors’ pets.
People, remember how Trump presidency went! Bad news for Trump? Float a batshiit crazy thing to get the media to play with that shiny ball instead. This is a fucking distraction, Trump lost the debate, he is courting fascists, he is old and weird and people leave his rallys bored, he had to throw a stink bomb
I see no way in which this benefits him
The topic does not matter.
The assertion at hand does not matter.
Whether anyone believes the assertion does not matter.
The only thing that matters is: Are you playing offense or defense?
Cuz attacking looks like winning. And explaining looks like losing.
That is a great series!
*courting other fascists
Wow. They are really going over the deep end on this. How could this possibly help them win votes?
It’s a distraction, classic Trump move to get you to look at something else
A distraction from what? What is overt, disgusting racism distract from in any helpful way?
The topic does not matter.
The assertion at hand does not matter.
Whether anyone believes the assertion does not matter.
The only thing that matters is: Are you playing offense or defense?
Cuz attacking looks like winning. And explaining looks like losing.
Okay? Well they’re being attacked. Massively. So I guess this distraction isn’t working out for them.
Who is defending? Not them, they are doubling down. Everyone else is calling the mayor and asking for a statement, or doing some vox pop with Haitians on the ground.
Yes, and all of those statements essentially are “Donald Trump and JD Vance are racist liars.”
Which you seem to think people shouldn’t say.
It “seems” you are wrong. I think they should go on the attack, and do that.
It gets them angry and supporting Republican anti-immigrant positions, instead of thinking about the issues that actually affect them, like why Steward Health Care was allowed to buy hospitals, squeeze as much money out of them as possible, give the CEO $250m, and then go bankrupt, leaving hundreds of people without healthcare.
You think people don’t think about the dire financial straits they are in because Trump and Vance are being racists? And somehow that helps Trump get elected?
None of that makes any sense.
When someone is out of work, and the media tells them it’s because of immigrants stealing their jobs, and not because of private equity squeezing companies to death for profit, yes, it helps Trump and the Republicans get elected.
The media isn’t telling them that. The media is telling them that isn’t true. Trump and Vance and their surrogates are telling them that. Trump was literally corrected in the debate.
Here, an instance of media, in the “immigrants are taking your jobs” category. It demonizes Tyson while conveniently ignoring that Republicans haven’t done a damn thing for labor in my lifetime.
I do not have the spoons necessary to bring you up to speed on everything that’s happened in politics in the past few decades that you should already know. Honestly, I feel like I’m getting sealioned here.
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But he literally talked about this in the debate…
I don’t think this is going to help at all. Black people are going to be pissed.
Backtracking equals flip-flopping, and then it’s a slippery slope to learning and growing and admitting you were wrong.
You’re probably right. And if they’re going to keep swimming towards the bottom of the pool, I really want journalists to start asking them why Haitians are eating pets. Because that’s the part that they haven’t actually made clear.
Haitians don’t eat dogs and cats in Haiti. The Haitians in Springfield aren’t starving, most of them have jobs. So why are they eating them, JD?
JD isn’t talking to people who think stuff through like that, he’s talking to racists and they don’t care if it’s true or not, it gives them an excuse to feel that way.
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Dude has an accent in his voice, ergo he’s “biased” according to the loonies.
They are too used to the typical news cycle where they bombard the public with lies to the point where everyone starts believing those are real. They’ve grown complacent.
Advisors in meeting: “We have a clear path to 270 as long as they focus on single issue voters who care most ab-”
Trump interrupts everyone to talk about how boring this meeting is, invites everyone to order McDonald’s with him.
JD rubs chin pensively, thinking about a single issue to focus on, something easy which does not involve walking into a donut shop
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Eating a dog or cat you have bred yourself would make PETA angry. Eating a beloved family pet of a true blooded hard working American would make a lot more people angry.
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Stalking a cat would be hard, but trapping one is easy.
The reason people don’t eat their neighbors’ cats isn’t because it’d be difficult, it’s because most people aren’t absolute psychopaths like JD Vance
Uhm, a raccoon trap is also a cat trap. Easy enough to setup. Hell even the wile-e-coyote style trap with a stick and a rope will work if you use proper bait.
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They don’t CARE about the facts or how absurd their claims are. Also pet eating is something that, in times past, was a racist slur foisted onto Asians, like Chinese restaurants who cooked cat instead of beef or chicken, and more specifically Koreans, who did consume dog meat sparingly, but that was something that happened historically it was never common and dog meat consumption is actually illegal now in South Korea, and eating dog meat has been in rapid decline for decades anyway.
Seeing Haitians get called pet eaters is actually a very new thing.
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Grilling chicken in Ohio, eh? Hmm, I hear there’s a huge orange chicken who is scared to have a second debate because he got so badly humiliated in the first one. He might want to stay away from Ohio since they are grilling his kind.
JD Vance said he was Making the Story up so as a Free Thinking Republican I need to wait until Fox News tells me what to think!
Where’s dave chappelle in all of this? Isnt this in his backyard? Isnt he a trump supporter now?
There is no such thing as an “honest conservative”. No such thing.
You know what would be great, would be to hold these weirdos liable for the time and expense that public agencies have incurred to deal with the bomb threats and idiots they’ve directly incited.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
“Another ‘debunked’ story that turned out to have merit.”
This is the most infuriating thing they do. They assume that any developing story is actually the most extreme version that favors their side. Then they ignore all evidence to the contrary and fish for any evidence that they can claim as confirmation, even if it doesn’t pass the laugh test. But they assert “It was confirmed!” with such confidence and shamelessness that it becomes easier for people to believe them, and eventually the media stops trying to debunk them.
Definitely not the first time this happened. If you wanna find other examples, look at anything where experts on the topic believe one thing but a majority of the American people believe the other. It’s pretty much guaranteed that the thing the American people believe originated as GOP propaganda.
A nutjob conservative on Lemmy has been telling me that babies are being executed in post-birth abortions using these same tactics.
I wish I had told myself that from 25 years ago before I went online and was exposed to these people with all the naivety of the socially underdeveloped autistic 17 year old that I was at the time. I often have to learn things in the hardest way imaginable.
This whole “weirdo” thing is idiotic. It’s handling them with kid gloves rather than underscoring they are fucking evil and want to do evil things.
Also, as a huge weirdo myself, I had kind of thought that most people stopped caring how weird I am after high school, and I thought that was pretty neat. Now that it has become a favorite insult to use against fascists, I get the feeling that people only refrain from remarking on it because they’re being polite to me, but they definitely still care and would wield it as a weapon given half a reason to.
People have spent close to a decade trying to convince everyone that Trump is evil and wants to do evil things. How well has that worked out?
weirdo is good, us stressing about their evil isn’t getting us anywhere
I view it as a great insult for them. Conservatives want nothing more than to be “normal.” They rely so much on the feeling of safety they get by being part of the “normal” crowd. If you called me weird I would embrace that label. I am weird! I’m not like everyone else and I like that about myself! For them that is not at all the case. The more we can make them think that what they are doing is NOT accepted by society and that we all think they are weird the more likely they are to stop doing it.
In their ideology, if you’re not “normal”, you’re in one of the othered groups and your face becomes a fair target for their favorite face-eating leopards.
No, you see, they project about everything.
They absolutely hope they are “normal.”
Their whole ideology is based on group conformity.
It’s been massively effective and has put them on the defensive in a way no other criticism ever has.
US politics is hilarious. Why do you even waste time on those dumbasses? Go and do productive things. You have lots of time while this crazy trumpy shit is going on.
Lots of people were 100% convinced in 2016 that there was no way Trump could win. I know because, TBH, I was one of them. So I don’t think it’s anywhere near out of the question that Trump might win this year; I do not know it, neither do you, neither does anyone else.
Because ignoring them will only allow them to grow larger and stronger unchecked. It’s like talking about ignoring an obvious stalker who is clearly building a plan on your daily movements and knows exactly where you live and when you leave/return home. They can be a remarkably stupid person but they will eventually find the perfect opportunity to strike and you will never be able to get any justice for it.
That is literally something that happened to me. More than once.
Because we’re fucking terrified of them winning.
I wouldn’t like to be paralyzed in terror. It’s not reasonable and not useful. I would be wise to think what to do instead.
Get back to us when when your country is a hair’s breadth from being taken over by a fascist dictator.
Actively doing something useful is what I suggested. It has already been communicated that the entire topic is bullshit.
Talking inside the bubble is not helpful anymore. There is no one listening here who could change an opinion about Trump.
I would be wise to think what to do instead.
THIS^ this is the statement that needs to be repeated over and over in leftist american circles.
i think if we worked on this instead of endless whining and worrying, the problem would be gone by now. the solutions are simple. sorry you got downvoted. you didn’t deserve it.
Did you know: people can do more than one thing
JD has a really weird fixation on cats. Cat ladies, grilling cats, cats cats cats. Has JD ever bummed a cat? We’ll never know but it makes me wonder
No, it isn’t a couch.
JD watches Backroom Casting Couch for a different reason than most of us.
Harvey Weinstein was so disappointed.
They are often found residing on or near couches though
Well we know he’s gotten freaky with a dolphin so a cat seems plausible.
Cats have been known to scratch up a couch. Hummmm.
O my god, it all cums full circle
this is the reason
(the reason I am going to be spreading from now on hahahah)
Swift, the crazy cat lady, gives endorsement, distract with crazy cat news. This is a distraction, Trump does this
Being super racist as a distraction is not a very good distraction. It also doesn’t distract from the Swift endorsement at all.
Nobody is talking about anything right now except the memes around cats and dogs. You and I, we agree it’s racist, but independents may buy this hook without thinking it’s racist. We agree that everything coming out of his mouth is lies and garbage, but independents are much more neutral and are willing to give him, the former president, the benefit of the doubt. They probably are thinking, wow, things have gotten bad in Springfield, instead of haha what a crazy old man who lost the debate. They aren’t thinking about swift because this cat thing has completely flooded the zone. This is what Trump did all for years
That “may” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
They “may” see it as the extremely racist thing that is so racist that even Republicans are saying “stop with the racism.”
Or they may like the little tickle of racism,or any number of other explanations… The point is we are in a bubble and have no freaking idea what they actually think, so plausible statements aren’t that heavy of a lift. They may do as you say as well, but your may is no lighter of a lift
Then why are you arguing that it’s a distraction?
Because it is?
Either it’s definitely a distraction or we have no idea what they actually think. You can’t have it both ways.
Liberals likes to eat baby cats. Prove me wrong. See I won you lose, end of the story.
