J.D. Vance can’t even bullshit right

In a controversial interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, J.D. Vance seemed to admit that he was willing to “create stories” to advance a political agenda. Bash accused Vance of spreading “baseless” and “unsubstantiated” stories about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. The CNN host rightly pointed out that these claims are inciting racist violence against Haitians. Vance responded: “If I have to make up a story to get the American media to really focus on the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

For a politician, these words are commendable at any time, let alone when he is being questioned for spreading lies. Vance’s critics jumped to the conclusion that this was a confession. But Vance’s defenders claim his words were taken out of context and that what he said was that he and Trump were willing to play up the true story in order to shine a spotlight on the suffering of white working-class Americans in a media culture that ignores it.

But looking at the broader context of Vance’s remarks doesn’t lend credence to his charitable reading of his words. His claims about Haitians were demonstrably false, and even Ohio lawmakers (notably Springfield Mayor Bob Rue and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican) condemned Vance and Donald Trump. spreading lies that endanger innocent people.

A closer look at Vance’s exchanges with Bash does not exonerate Trump’s running mate, but rather shows that he deliberately polluted the clear waters of the truth. The key part of the altercation between Vance and Bash goes like this:

Vance: “The American media was completely ignoring this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I had to make up a story to get the American media to really focus on the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I would do, da Dana, because you completely let Kamala Harris drift. You interviewed her once and you talked about opposing me, Dana, and you didn’t object to the fact that she cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act. The reason why many Americans cannot afford food and housing.

Bash: “You just said this was a story you created…?”

Vance: “Dana, it’s coming from first-hand accounts from my constituents. When I say we’re ‘creating a story,’ … I mean we’re creating the American media to pay attention to it.

The first thing to note is Vance’s inaccurate and euphemistic use of the term “cat meme.” Typically, cat memes refer to those cute pictures and videos of cats that tug at the heartstrings, appealing to warm emotions, causing them to spread like wildfire on the internet. Fake stories of pets being kidnapped and eaten are the opposite of cat memes. They are more akin to blood libel – the deliberate defamation of a vulnerable group in a way designed to inspire revulsion and violence. In Bash’s interview, Vance referred to Haitians in Ohio as illegal immigrants, which was also largely untrue. In any case, memes are not statements of fact but stylizations of reality.

Additionally, Vance defended his claims by saying he had heard “first-hand” reports of the feline feast from “his constituents.” But such first-hand accounts have yet to be confirmed. At best, we have hearsay and urban legend. Furthermore, the Haitians in Ohio who are now the victims of threats and physical violence are also Vance’s constituents — even though he clearly doesn’t want to see them that way. It is unclear why the “first-hand” testimony of Haitian Americans is less credible than the words of their accusers.

Many of Vance’s other claims don’t stand up to factual scrutiny. Did 20,000 Haitians move to Springfield, as Vance has repeatedly said? Trump, an even more dramatic fabulist than Vance, now says that number is too low and that the real number is 32,000. In fact, both Vance and Trump are dealing with the facts: Census data shows the population is much smaller, at just 5,000 people.

Given that Vance’s basic argument is a lie, there’s no reason to accept his attempt to clarify his remarks by claiming that when he said “create the story,” he meant “we’re creating the American media to pay attention to it.” While perhaps not a complete confession, the sentence about “creating a story” is something of a Freudian lapse—an unintentional admission of truth.

Freudian lapses suggest something like guilt, a recognition of some personal wrongdoing. In the language of the medieval church, which Vance, as a Catholic convert, might have appreciated, he suffered from “ayenbite of inwyt.”

One way to understand Vance is that he is trying to become a master of bullshit like his new political hero, Donald Trump. In fact, Trump is the perfect symbol of the crucial difference between bullshit and lies proposed by the late philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt: The liar knows he is lying, while the bullshit artist has no idea what the difference between truth and lies is. difference.