JD Vance torches media for not caring about immigration crisis until GOP shared cat memes

Republican vice presidential nominee Senator JD Vance (Ohio) slammed the media for not caring about the Biden-Harris administration's self-inflicted immigration crisis until Republicans began sharing cat memes online.

After Tuesday evening's debate between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris, CNN's Kaitlan Collins attempted to corner Vance about allegedly false statements he and Trump made about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, slaughtering and eating wildlife and residents' pets.

'Nobody cared about this until we raised this issue, which is disgraceful.'

Collins claimed she was "surprised" that Trump "brought up this misleading, false claim" during the debate with Harris.

"Trump just amplified it to tens of millions of people who were watching. Why push something that's not true?" Collins asked Vance.

"Well, first of all, city officials have not said that it's not true. They've said they don't have all the evidence, but we've heard from a number of constituents on the ground ... both firsthand and secondhand reports saying this stuff is happening," Vance replied. "So they, very clearly — meaning the people on the ground dealing with this — think that it is happening, and I think that it's important for journalists to actually get on the ground and uncover this stuff for themselves when you have a lot of people saying, 'My pets are being abducted,' or, 'Geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us.' This is crazy stuff."

Vance continued, "Whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. Health care costs are up. Housing costs are up. Communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town. This is what Kamala Harris' border policies have done."

The senator then slammed the corporate media for failing to take the administration's border crisis seriously until the GOP began creating comical posts about it.

"I think it's interesting, Kaitlan, that the media didn't care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats, and that speaks to the media's failure to care about what's going on in these communities," Vance added. "If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we're going to keep on doing it because the media should care about what's going on."

Collins argued that the "media does care about it," pointing to a recent "lengthy" New York Times article and a PBS NewsHour story.

Vance turned the tables on Collins, noting that her examples proved his point, claiming the reports were released as a result of the memes.

"Caused by us talking about it and bringing it up. Nobody cared about this until we raised this issue, which is disgraceful," he stated.

Collins attempted to corner Vance with a "gotcha" moment by asking whether he would believe residents' reports if they had claimed to see Bigfoot.

"It's a totally fair point, but nobody's calling my office and saying they saw Bigfoot. What they're calling and saying is, 'We're seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats and city officials aren't doing anything about it,'" he replied.

Vance added, "I have a responsibility as a United States senator. I think the media has a responsibility as an institution that cares about truth to actually take people seriously when they say their lives have been ruined by this migrant crisis."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!