The Media Research Center’s Jorge Bonilla spent a Sept. 11 post being angry that Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s lies were called out:
U.S. Senator and GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance went into the post-debate spin room and exposed the media’s omissive biases when covering the effects of the border disaster in small towns like Springfield, Ohio. It took cat memes to get the media to look at the story.
Watch as Vance calls out the media’s general disinterest in what happened in a small town until it was time to firefight a story on behalf of the Regime (click “expand” to view full transcript):
[…]Immigration had its moment in this debate, and the conversation did turn to Springfield, Ohio. And the fact is that the plight of this small town did not burst on to the national consciousness until the cat (and waterfowl) memes began circulating on X and other social media.
In this case, the media followed a familiar pattern: ignore a story that is inconvenient or embarrassing to the Regime until it can be turned against conservatives. The insertion of roughly 20,000 unassimilated migrants into a town of about 50,000 is a recipe for upheaval. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration did the inserting, so this story is not convenient to cover in its face.
And it wasn’t until videos of contentious town halls began circulating, and people began amplifying these stories on social media, that the media began firefighting the story and questioning whether any of this is really happening.
And this is the point that Vance drives home to Collins. Nobody cared about Springfield until the cat memes started circulating. And even now, the Regime Media remains uninterested in this story except to firefight it. Rather than do journalism and investigate fully. Vance is proven right.
Bonilla is deliberately omitting the crucial point that all of this was a lie. Haitian immigrants were not eating people’s pets, they are not illegal immigrants — in fact, local officials encouraged them to come — and the rate of communicable diseases has not increased as Vance claimed. But Bonilla would rather embrace a lie that advances his partisan political agenda than facts that don’t, then try to dismiss the lies as nothing but “cat memes.”
The same day, Mark Finkelstein similarly refused to admit the pet-eating story was a lie, instead whining that Donald Trump was busted for claiming it during a debate:
If it had been up to Kasie Hunt, host of CNN This Morning, the rest of today’s show could have been ditched, replaced by a non-stop loop of Trump making his claim, during last night’s debate, that migrants are eating the pets of residents of Springfield, Ohio.
She cited leftist late-night jester Stephen Colbert, and smirked at Trump “spouting baseless allegations about migrants eating pets.” After playing it once, Hunt begged a show director:
“Can we, can we just, Jimmy in the control room, can we play the pets bite one more time? Can we just watch that one more time?”
Sadly for Kasie, Jimmy didn’t have the bit cued up. Instead, they moved to a clip of a CNN post-debate focus group in Erie, Pennsylvania of supposedly undecided voters. Hunt said “we do have sound of undecided voters talking about this pet-eating conspiracy.”
Bonilla still refused to admit the lie in another post that day:
During his post-debate spin room interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Ohio Senator and GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made the point that the Regime Media had zero interest in what was going on in Ohio until cat memes began popping up on social media. It took less than 24 hours for Vance to be proven right, with NBC and CBS rushing to firefight the stories coming out of Springfield, Ohio.
[…]The thing is: none of these reports ever showed an on-air interaction with a city official. None of these reports ever mentioned or displayed the various public meetings where these concerns were originally aired by local residents. Both NBC and CBS simply expect their viewers to accept at face value that these claims are without merit.
Each of these reports, filed by Yamiche Alcindor and Lilia Luciano, respectively, then pivot away from the various crises affecting Springfield as a direct result of Biden-Harris immigration policies. That is why this is such a firefight.
There was no incentive for Regime Media to report on what is happening at Springfield until there appeared a way for the story to be made into a Trump-negative story. And the media didn’t get that incentive until Trump uttered “dogs and cats” at the presidential debate. The media wouldn’t have found out about Springfield except for the emergence of memes of cats and ducks urging Trump to save them.
By jumping so quickly into the Springfield story, JD Vance was proven right.
Again: Bonilla is cheerleading a lie because it helps his narratives. Indeed, though he is whining that that we aren’t supposed to trust city officials who point out it’s a lie, Bonilla gives us no reason to trust random people making inflammatory, evidence-free claims.
Curtis Houck whined that a CBS show had on “two liberals melting down over Trump talking about Haitian immigrants overrunning Springfield, Ohio” — but wouldn’t admit Trump was lying.
Clay Waters lashed out at a PBS show talking about it, huffing that had on “hard-left academic extremist-hunter Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who understood the assignment.” Miller-Idriss pointed out that this was all about manufacturing “a threat from the other, from immigrants, from people of color to the nation, to white families, to civilization itself” — which Waters didn’t rebut.
In a Sept. 15 post, Bonilla was still refusing to admit Vance was lying even as he once again praised those lies for advancing his preferred narratives:
GOP vice presidential nominee and Ohio Senator JD Vance went on the Regime Media’s Sunday public affairs shows and utterly dismantled them for their lack of coverage of the stress that the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policies have placed upon such towns as Springfield, Ohio, until a Trump-adverse angle can be exploited.
Watch as Vance exposes the practice during a fiery interview with CNN’s Dana Bash[.] […]
Bash tried to accuse Vance of making up stuff, to which he clarified that he and Trump created the media’s focus on Springfield by echoing the concerns of his constituents. This exchange is particularly ironic, given the Regime Media’s role in advancing all manner of fabrications from the left, with zero fact-check or context provided. There is no way to sufficiently pause the time and space continuum so as to be able to compile an exhaustive list. However, a more recent curation would include the media’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story until Joe Biden magically produced a letter signed by 51 former intel officers calling it Russian disinformation, as well as the media’s furtherance of such hoaxes as “Very Fine People”, “Bloodbath”, and “Suckers and Losers”.
Once more, Bonilla is privileging Vance’s lie for partisan reasons. Instead, he praised the lie once more:
The American media, intent on suppressing or otherwise omitting stories unfavorable to the Regime, has steadfastly refused to cover the effects of the current administration’s border policies across America. Whether we are talking about migrants violently taking over apartment complexes in Colorado, raping and murdering girls in Texas, criming in New York City, or straining small towns such as Springfield.
Bonilla provided no evidence that the Haitian immigrants were “straining” Springfield.
Tim Graham took his own turn at complaining that Trump’s and Vance’s lies were called out:
The badly disguised Democrats at PBS are having a hard time with this second assassination attempt on Donald Trump. They barely passed over it on Sunday night, and on Monday night, News Hour anchor Amna Nawaz and NPR reporter Tamara Keith savaged Trump-Vance again for demonizing Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Curtis Houck pointed out on Sunday night that it was a 30-second news brief, followed by more Springfield bashing of Trump-Vance. I’m guessing the PBS News Weekend shows are pre-produced during the week and are not to be disturbed. So you get 30 seconds in the “News Wrap” on an assassination attempt, and eight minutes on celebrity endorsements of presidential candidates.
Graham huffed that CNN’s Bash “fact-checked Vance like she was Linsey Davis on the claims of pet-eating, just like all Democrats want them to do, incessantly.” He refused to admit that the fact-check was correct and showed that Vance was lying.