Tim Ryan tore into Donald Trump and JD Vance on Wednesday over their smears about migrants in Springfield.
The former Ohio congressman, who was defeated by Vance in his 2022 Senate race, was asked about what was happening in Springfield during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. His time on the air came the day after a Haitian nonprofit group announced it had filed charges against the GOP nominees over their baseless claims that migrants in the city are eating residents’ cats and dogs.
“It’s tragic,” Ryan said of what’s happening to Springfield, where bomb threats have forced schools to close since the conspiracy theories erupted. He acknowledged there had been “some issues” with local migrants related to housing and health care but said they’d been a “net positive” and that “the community love these Haitian immigrants who came.”
“I think this is just an indicator, Willie, of just how crass Donald Trump and JD Vance are,” Ryan said, addressing co-host Willie Geist. “They don’t give a damn about who they use, which bodies they step over in the process to gain power. And I think it’s sickening that they would use these immigrants—all they want to do is scare people.”
“They want to scare us about immigrants,” he continued. “They want to scare everybody about ‘the liberals are coming to get you, the transgender people are coming to get you, World War III is gonna happen, the economy’s gonna collapse.’ It’s so fear based—I think they’re two scared little boys who want everyone else to be scared with them.”
Ryan, who represented Ohio in the House between 2003 and 2023, also shared his astonishment that Vance—who currently represents the state in the Senate—would hurt the economic well-being of one of his own communities for his own “political purposes.”
“Your job is to represent these people,” Ryan said. “Your job is to stick up for these communities, and you’re destroying them. It’s sickening to watch this happen.”
He added: “If you want to look at what the character of these two gentlemen is—and I say that term loosely—if you want to see their character, you’re seeing it with this issue.”
