JD Vance Makes Light of Actual Foreign Interference in His State

At a press conference on Ohio’s efforts to respond to the chaos created in Springfield by a slew of bomb threats, Governor Mike DeWine revealed that a number of the bomb threats came from “one particular country” overseas.

We have people, unfortunately, overseas, who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States. And they’re continuing to do that.

After that, in a truly deranged Xitter manifesto basically arguing that if the media doesn’t platform the false claims of Nazis attacking migrants, they’ll shoot someone, JD Vance falsely claimed that that’s proof a double standard from the media, then continued to lie that Kamala Harris was responsible for the assassination attempts against Trump.

[R]eports today suggest they came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.

The double standard is breathtaking. Donald Trump and I are, by their account, directly responsible for bomb threats from foreign countries. Why? Because we had the audacity to repeat what residents told us about the problems in their town. Meanwhile, Harris allies call for Trump to be eliminated as the media publishes arguments that he deserved to be shot.

Vance integrated this attack into his stump speech in Sparta Michigan, claiming that, “the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation” and deliberately lying — before DeWine revealed this — when they noted the bomb threats followed Trump and JD’s false attacks on Haitians.

Bomb threats that shut down schools and police stations and city halls is not foreign disinformation, JD. They are threats, just like the threats Trump has elicited against prosecutors, judges, and witnesses in cases against him. Everyone has had to take those bomb threats seriously, because you never know when one will be real. A school principal can’t tell in real time if a threat is coming from overseas. The threats have caused real costs to the city and its residents.

And, even if all the threats are coming from overseas — which goes further than what DeWine said — they are a foreign attack on Springfield. A foreign attack on Springfield doing very real damage.

I find it curious that DeWine didn’t reveal which country — China, Iran, Russia are the likely candidates given DeWine’s description that the country is taking “one more opportunity to mess with the United States” — is calling in these bomb threats. A Trump supporter like DeWine would have incentive to reveal if it were either of the first two (China doesn’t do this kind of thing, but Iran adopted the identity of Proud Boys in 2020 to threaten Democratic voters). If it’s Russia — and even if it’s Iran — the foreign country would be doing the bomb threats for the same reason Trump and JD keep lying about Haitians: to stoke fear and division. If it’s Russia, they’d be doing so in support of the candidate selling fear and division. But whichever it is, it appears to be (given DeWine’s description), a hostile foreign country seeking to harm the United States.

And the Senator from Ohio, JD Vance, treats these attacks on his state with very real consequences as mere disinformation.

The Senator from Ohio is minimizing an attack from one foreign country so he can attack immigrants legally in his state. JD Vance is awfully selective about which foreign threats he wails about.

Update: Relatedly, yesterday The New Republic published my analogy between JD’s false claims and those made by trolls pushing Trump in 2016.