JD Vance appears to admit tale about Haitian immigrants eating pets is made-up as he loses cool with CNN host

An ugly week of racist fearmongering kicked off by Donald Trump’s viral debate claim that Haitain immigrants were “eating the dogs” of pet owners in an Ohio town came to a head on Sunday as JD Vance, the ex-president’s top surrogate, faced journalists’ questions about the spiraling chaos.

Tuesday’s debate between Trump and his opponent Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had several eyebrow-raising moments but none moreso than when Trump, echoing his latest online-born conspiracy, baselessly accused thousands of legal migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of stealing, killing, and eating pet dogs off the street.

The conspiracy was fact-checked in real time by ABC’s David Muir, who noted that city officials had looked into the claim and found it to be baseless. But the damage was already done.

Nearly a week later, Vance found himself once again answering for his running mate’s actions after days of shocking fallout in Springfield, where residents have reported fliers dropped by the Ku Klux Klan as well as several threats of bombings or mass shootings — the latest of which, at Wittenberg University, occurred Saturday night just hours before Vance would go on the air.

On Sunday, Ohio’s junior senator was pressed by journalists as to why the Trump campaign was spreading a claim it could provide no evidence for beyond the anecdotal “I heard it on television” excuse Trump himself gave during the debate.

On CNN, he seemingly admitted that his claims were lies, then continued by saying that he would keep spreading such tales, even knowing them to be untrue, if they resulted in the media talking about issues he claimed were still just as real despite the deception.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media