OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
CNN’s Dana Bash reacted to her contentious interview with GOP vice-presidential candidate JD Vance about his claim regarding Haitian migrants on Monday, during which the Ohio senator accused Bash of going easy on Vice President Kamala Harris.
“There was kind of a pregnant pause when I heard him say, ‘if we have to create stories and that’s what we’ll do,’ when I said, what, you created a story? And then he, I think, he realized what he said and moved on and went after me again,” Bash complained during an appearance on her network on Thursday.
On Sunday, Bash and Vance engaged in a heated exchange over claims made by former President Trump about Haitian migrants in Ohio during his debate with Harris earlier this month.
“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I start talking about cat memes. If I have to, I mean, 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, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast,” Vance said.
But when she pressed Trump’s running mate on what he actually meant by that, Vance clarified, “meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”
Bash said during the discussion on Monday that Vance “took issue with the fact that I quoted the mayor of Springfield,” who had asked federal officials to stop repeating inflammatory claims about the Haitian migrants because it could put residents in Danger, Fox News noted.
“Then Vance sort of accused me of telling him that he’s inciting violence,” Bash added.
Repeatedly during the interview, Vance told Bash that he was merely responding to what several of his own constituents had told his office regarding alleged activity by the migrants in the city of about 60,000. He noted that the community has had a difficult time absorbing and caring for some 20,000 Haitians who have been sent there by the Biden-Harris administration thanks to its open-border policies.
“Residents have been pointing to an uptick in crime, mayhem and car crashes due to the massive influx of new residents, according to reports,” Fox noted.
“There are a lot of employers in Springfield who are so grateful to have these Haitian migrants there because they were trying to grow the economy in Springfield, which has been decimated in the 70s and 80s, and they didn‘t have workers to help do that. Now, they do,” Bash continued.
“Questions about integrating and schools and with language and taking drivers tests, changing the laws. Those are really legitimate questions. Eating dogs and cats, that is steeped in racist tropes and there’s no other way to say it,” she said.
Several residents of the city have reported such incidents, as Vance noted, so it’s not clear why Bash and her network would dismiss them out of hand or call anyone reporting such activity “racist,” though that is a common refrain from left-wing journalists.
There have been multiple bomb threats in Springfield in recent days, too, as Bash noted. “You’ve been talking about the fact that there have been, I think, today again, there are colleges there that are closed, schools that are closed, hospitals that had bomb threats, and look, it is dangerous; I mean, there is no other way to say it,” she said.
However, she apparently is either unaware of or is ignoring an announcement by the state’s governor, Mike DeWine, earlier this week that those threats are unfounded, largely foreign in origin, and very likely designed to cause political unrest.
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“We have received 33 separate bomb threats, each one of which has been responded to, and each one has been found to be a hoax,” DeWine said during a press conference. “I want to make that very, very clear. None of these had any validity at all.”
“We know that people are very, very concerned, and we have taken some actions to address that. But let me say this: These hoaxes, these threats have all been hoaxes. None of them have panned out,” DeWine added. “We have people, unfortunately, overseas who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country, and they are looking for opportunities to mess with the United States.”
