John Oliver criticizes JD Vance for spreading the “pet panic” that he knew was wrong

John Oliver had an Emmy-worthy excuse for not saying anything about this month’s presidential debate by taking last Sunday off because he and Last week tonight won two more Emmys (for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series).

Still, Oliver felt it necessary to inform his audience of the wild, crazy events that have occurred since then. Among other things, he blamed JD Vance for causing all the chaos in Springfield, Ohio out of the blue.

“Vance not only repeated claims he heard, but actually contributed to the chaos he is now trying to exploit,” Oliver said.

“There have been a lot of jokes about cat eaters since the debate on September 10,” Oliver said. “But I still want to talk about it, both because the chaos Trump caused in Springfield continues and because it feels typical of his campaign.”

Schools and hospitals have had to close temporarily due to bomb threats. The city’s Haitian residents live in fear. And Trump has announced that he wants to visit Springfield, even though the Republican mayor has advised him to stay away.

Oliver said the panic was all Vance’s fault, starting with a letter the Springfield city manager sent in July to the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee, of which Vance serves. The letter asked for federal funds to support local programs to address “a significant housing crisis” and the need for additional services for the Haitians who have moved to Springfield in recent years.

As Oliver — and others before him — have pointed out, employers in Springfield were recruiting many of these Haitian migrants specifically to fill vacancies that locals couldn’t fill. Yet, Oliver continued, Vance chose to read only part of the letter in a Senate hearing the day after receiving it, focusing on the problems and omitting the solution, and then issued a press release falsely labeling the city manager’s letter as a “migrant crisis” rather than a housing crisis.

John Legend from Springfield, Ohio: “Nobody eats cats”

“I guess we now know that it is a mistake to expect precise wording from Vance when it comes to Haita (so),” joked Oliver, referring to a clip in which the young senator from Ohio mispronounced the name of the island nation.

Still, Vance’s public misrepresentation of Springfield’s request in July sparked coverage on Fox News, which then spread to other media outlets, then to posts by X and Elon Musk, and finally to a neo-Nazi group that marched through Springfield with swastika banners in August, after which one of the group’s leaders addressed the city council.

Then in late July, a photo circulated purporting to show a Springfield man holding a goose, but “as TMZ of all places reported,” it was a Columbus man with two geese injured in a car crash. Social media seized on the photo and instead fed rumors about duck thefts and duck eaters, and then a woman posted on Facebook claims about abused cats and more — although she later retracted and deleted the post, the damage was done. Vance added fuel to the fire on Sept. 5 when he released footage of his July speech linking the animal-eater rumors to Haitians.

Shameless JD Vance goes even further into the crazy conspiracy surrounding cat-eating migrants

“This panic about eating pets was completely groundless,” Oliver said. Worse still, Oliver said, citing a Wall Street Journal September 18 article, Vance knew it. “It turns out that not long after his first post about Haitians eating pets, his campaign team actually called the Springfield city manager, who recalls Vance’s staff asking him point blank, ‘Is the rumor true that pets are being caught and eaten?’ and he replied, ‘I told him no.'”

Oliver added: “So Vance knew all along it was a lie. But instead of simply admitting that, he and his campaign team have scrambled to dig up new evidence that either bears no resemblance to his claims or falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.”

To make matters worse, Vance also spread rumors that Haitians spread infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV, and insinuated that an 11-year-old Springfield boy who died in a school bus accident was actually murdered by a Haitian. The boy’s parents have asked that their son’s death not be exploited, even speaking before the City Council on the night of the presidential debate.

“The last thing we need is to have the worst day of our lives constantly and brutally shoved in our faces,” Aiden’s father said on Sept. 10, criticizing Vance and Trump for creating the impression that their son was stirring up hatred toward their neighbors.

“This man didn’t need all this nonsense. And neither did Springfield,” Oliver said. “They didn’t want attention. They wanted help. Vance is the one who wanted attention.”

Oliver said that while Vance is not good at many things, “it turns out he is pretty good at parroting racist lies like the spineless moron he is.”

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