Vance eventually told Bash to “shut up” about the rumor that has sparked racist verbal attacks on Haitians, marches in the town by the white-nationalist Proud Boys, bomb and shooting threats, closed schools and Donald Trump’s insistence that he’ll visit the town and eventually save it with mass deportations, if re-elected.

Vance said when he was repeating the disproven claims that migrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs, he was “creating the American media focusing on it.”