U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s response to former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, and his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance’s false claims surrounding Haitian immigrants in Ohio has taken off online.
Springfield, Ohio, has been dominating the headlines over the past week after false claims were made that Haitian migrants, who are in the United States legally, have been killing pets and eating them.
These claims have been repeated by Trump and Vance. In his first debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, on Tuesday, which attracted in excess of 67 million viewers, the former president repeated the claim, saying: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs—the people that came in. They’re eating the cats.”
However, Trump was quickly fact-checked live when he repeated the accusations, as city officials have debunked the rumors and police say there are “no credible reports” of the claims. Nevertheless, the false claims have spread like wildfire online, leaving Haitian immigrants to consider leaving the city as backlash against immigrant communities has intensified.
In a Sunday interview with NBC News’ Meet The Press, host Kristen Welker asked Buttigieg about officials in the state warning about a “strain on resources” over Haitian migrants in the community. The question came after the mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, a Republican, admitted his city has been dealing with an “infrastructure strain” with the influx of Haitian migrants.
“We have been dealing with an infrastructure strain due to this immigration influx. Any community in the United States that would receive 25 to 30 percent of their population in a short period of time is going to face infrastructure strain.”
In response, Buttigieg pointed toward the use of the false claims as a campaign strategy to “talk about anything, but their actual agenda.”
“Let’s be very clear, that community and the very real people who are dealing with some really ugly stuff right now, like the bomb threats, are having that inflicted on them as part of a strategy from a campaign that wants to talk about anything, but their actual record and their actual agenda,” Buttigieg said.
He added: “Donald Trump and JD Vance cannot afford for this campaign to be about things like how Donald Trump eliminated the right to choose and continues to leave the door open to signing a national abortion ban…they need to get us talking about something else. The crazier, the better. And they go for something so outrageous that you actually can’t ignore it…because very real pain has been inflicted on this community.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s campaign via email for comment.
Buttigieg’s response, posted on X, formerly Twitter, by journalist Aaron Rupar, has garnered over 520,000 views as of Sunday evening.
Pete Buttigieg on Meet the Press: “Donald Trump and JD Vance cannot afford for this campaign to be about things like how Donald Trump eliminated the right to choose … they need to get us talking about something else. The crazier, the better.” pic.twitter.com/yolqKnXFE7
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2024
In addition, Buttigieg posted on X, “Cats! Dogs! Geese!…Like the last season before a show gets canceled for getting over-the-top and, at the same time, boring. This election is about jobs, wages, climate, health care, abortion. Not his show. Your life.” That post has garnered over 1.8 million views.
Buttigieg’s remarks come after Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, defended Haitian immigrants in his state during a Sunday interview on ABC News’ This Week, and spoke on some of the challenges due to the influx of Haitian migrants.
“I think it’s unfortunate that this came up,” the governor said. “Let me tell you what we do know though. What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence, with a lot of companies coming in.”
He added: “What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And frankly, that’s helped the economy.”
The governor went on to say that there are “some problems” that have arisen as a result of the large influx of new residents.
“When you go from a population of 58,000 and add 15,000 people onto that, you’re going to have some challenges and some problems,” DeWine said. “We’re addressing those. We’re working on those every single day.”
This comes after half a century of economic decline, Springfield worked hard to lure back the manufacturing industry. The plan worked and began creating jobs that ended up attracting immigrants. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitian migrants have moved to the city, which had a population of just under 60,000 in 2020, over the space of four years, city officials say.
They are in the country legally, the City of Springfield’s Immigration FAQ page says, many under the Immigration Parole Program, which, under certain conditions, allows noncitizens to remain in the U.S. temporarily without meeting standard visa or immigration requirements.
Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/Getty Images
In addition to DeWine’s remarks, Rue also spoke out and condemned the rhetoric recently telling local news station WSYX: “All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it.”
It comes after Springfield’s city hall had to be evacuated on Thursday morning after a bomb threat, which officials said included “hateful language toward immigrants and Haitians in our community,” was sent to it, along with the Clark County courthouse and two elementary schools.
Meanwhile, Vance was confronted with the mayor’s remarks during a Sunday interview with CNN’s State of the Union but rejected the idea that his promotion of the “eating pets” claim caused the bomb threats and condemned the threats. He also defended his right to spread the claims.
“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 told CNN’s Dana Bash in the interview.
Trump was also asked about the bomb threats by a reporter on Saturday.
“I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats,” the former president said. “I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants and that’s a terrible thing that happened.”
