JD Vance Confronts CNN Host in Tense Live Interview
CNN’s Dana Bash reflected on her charged interview with Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, discussing his comments on Haitian migrants. The Ohio senator challenged Bash, suggesting she has shown “excessive leniency” toward 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 asked, what, you created a story? And then he, I think, he realized what he said and moved on and went after me again,” Bash remarked during her Thursday interview on CNN.
The heated exchange followed remarks made by former President Donald Trump about Haitian migrants in Ohio during a conversation with Harris earlier this month, igniting a debate between Bash and Vance.
“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 stated.
When Bash pressed Vance to clarify, he explained, “we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”
As reported by Fox News, Bash noted in a recent discussion that Vance “took issue with the fact that I quoted the mayor of Springfield,” who had asked federal officials to avoid inflammatory remarks about Haitian migrants to prevent stirring local tensions.
“Then Vance sort of accused me of telling him that he’s inciting violence,” Bash continued.
Throughout the interview, Vance emphasized he was only responding to concerns voiced by his constituents about the perceived impacts of roughly 60,000 migrants in the area. He argued that due to the open-border policies of the Biden-Harris administration, Springfield has faced challenges in supporting the nearly 20,000 Haitians now residing there.
Fox reported that “Residents have been pointing to an uptick in crime, mayhem, and car crashes due to the massive influx of new residents.”
Bash countered, saying, “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.”
“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 asserted.
Vance argued that local residents have indeed reported certain incidents, questioning why CNN would dismiss these accounts or label them as “racist,” a term he claimed is often used by left-leaning journalists.
Bash noted the recent string of bomb threats in Springfield, saying, “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.”
However, she appeared to overlook a recent statement by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who clarified that these threats are unfounded, likely originating from foreign sources with the intent to provoke political tension.
“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 declared at a press conference. “I want to make that very, very clear. None of these had any validity at all.”
He concluded, “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.”