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During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Wall Street Journal reported Valerie Bauerlein ripped apart Donald Trump and J.D. Vance's continued spreading of lies that Haitians in Ohio are kidnapping pets and eating them.
Delving deeper into her bombshell reporting with colleagues Kris Maher and Tawnell D. Hobbs that made the front page of the Journal and completely debunked the story, Bauerlein's recitation of the facts on the ground in Springfield, Ohio, had "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski gasping "wow."
As the WSJ reported, GOP vice presidential nominee Vance submitted a police report of a missing cat as evidence of pet-poaching which fell completely apart when the owner was contacted and subsequently admitted the cat, Miss Sassy, was actually hiding and then confessed she was ashamed she caused so much grief for the Haitian community.
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As Bauerlien noted, the Trump campaign knows the pet-eating story is false but that hasn't stopped the presidential nominee and his running mate from still pushing it — including at a rally in New York on Wednesday night.
"Yesterday morning, after the story appeared, J.D. Vance, who had originally tweeted about this issue, said, 'Well, I choose to believe the stories are true,'" she told the hosts. "You know, we went there, we talked to people, we asked the police department for all of their records. The sheriff's office, the state wildlife division. There were no reports this was happening."
"You know, in journalism, it is discouraging that we are trying to vet these claims in good faith and they don't matter," she lamented. "I'm sure your inbox is interesting. My inbox says, 'You're all not doing your job.' I don't know if our reporting just doesn't break through sometimes. "
"You know, we live in a world where they call it viral for a reason. Once the things start spreading, it is like a virus. It is hard to find the origin or also to tamp it down," she added, to which Brzezinski blurted, "Wow."