Rolling Stone reports:

During a campaign event in Wisconsin on Tuesday, J.D. Vance told supporters that it’s not his job to check if a story is true before broadcasting it to his millions of supporters.

“The media has a responsibility to fact-check,” Vance said of false claims he’s spread accusing “illegal” Haitian migrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio, of killing and eating local pets.

Well, members of the media did fact-check Vance. As it turns out, the Ohio senator and his vice presidential campaign knew there was no credibility to the claims hours after he first aired them publicly, but chose to keep pushing them anyway, plunging the town into chaos.

According to a Wednesday report from The Wall Street Journal, on Sept. 9 — the day Vance first posted on X claiming local cats were being eaten by Springfield’s Haitians — most of which are in the town legally — his office called local authorities to verify the claim.

A Vance staffer “asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten [true]?’” City Manager Bryan Heck told the Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.” [Continue reading…]