In a hilarious rebuke of his interviewer during the Sunday, September 15 broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” Senator and Trump 2024 running mate JD Vance sounded off on CNN’s Dana Bash and asked whether she would like to debate him rather than pretend to ask him questions but then not let him answer them.

The context of Sen. Vance’s rebuke of Bash, who also interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris in what many on the right claimed was quite the softball interview, was that  Bash was pressing Sen. Vance about the situation in Springfield, Ohio. As a reminder, Springfield has seen a massive influx of Haitians under the Biden-Harris Administration, something that has led to a national outcry.

Indeed, former President Donald Trump brought up the situation in the September 10 presidential debate, commenting on accusations that pets in the town have gone missing due to the Haitians. He said, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

Bash, attacking Vance and others on the right who have raised alarms about the situation in Springfield, said, “Also, other evidence that you have talked about, even you’ve retweeted alleged evidence, are unsourced social media videos from a different city, apparently no connection to Haitians.”

Continuing, she suggested that warning about the consequences of mass migration is causing bomb threats in Springfield, saying, “So instead of saying things that are wrong and actually causing the hospitals, the schools, the government buildings to be evacuated because of bomb threats, because of the cats and dogs thing, why not actually be constructive in helping to better integrate them into the community?”

Scorching Bash over the implications of what she said, Vance snapped, “Dana, first of all, let me just respond to a couple of things that you said, but I wanna start with something you said, which I think is frankly disgusting and is more appropriate for a Democratic propagandist than it is for an American journalist.”

Continuing, he said that violence and threats are awful but that nothing he has said has led to any of that. He said, “There is nothing that I have said that has led to threats against these hospitals. These hospitals, the bomb threats, and so forth, it’s disgusting. The violence is disgusting. We condemn it. We condemn all violence.”

Sen. Vance added, “What we have said is that this town has suffered terribly … under the policies of Kamala Harris. Now, you just [accused] me of inciting violence against the community when all that I’ve done is surface the complaints of my constituents, people who are suffering because of Kamala Harris’s policies.”

A bit later, snapping at her interruptions and attempts to correct him, Sen. Vance said, “Dana, would you like to ask me questions and then let me answer them, or would you like to debate me on these topics?” He added, “I’m happy to be here to talk about policy, but if you’re going to interrupt me every single time that I open my mouth, then why am I even doing this?”

Watch the contentious debate here:

Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video