A conservative journalist is denying that he almost used a racial slur to refer to Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, while being interviewed by Megyn Kelly.
It happened Monday when Kelly was interviewing National Review editor Rich Lowry about the bomb threats and other threats of violence that have plagued the small city since former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have spread a baseless smear that Haitian immigrants there were eating neighbors’ pets.
Vance told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that he felt the need to “create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.”
Lowry didn’t seem perturbed by the made-up story, comparing it to “alternative facts,” a term coined by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway to defend his lies about the crowd size at his 2017 inauguration. In fact, Lowry went so far as to say that Vance had brought “other facts to bear in the debate that are being ignored.”
Lowry then seemed amused that journalists such as Bash were spending their time trying to verify the story.
“I loved ― I think it was Dana Bash in that interview ― where she says police have gone through 11 months of recordings of calls,” he said.
“And they’ve only found two Springfield residents calling to complain about Haitian nig… migrants taking geese from ponds. Only two calls!”
Many people on X, formerly Twitter, were convinced they heard Lowry almost say the N-word before correcting himself.
Lowry allegedly makes the remark around the 42-second mark of the video.
Although many people were convinced that Lowry started to say the racial slur, he got support from Fox News and National Review contributor Andy McCarthy.
McCarthy defended Lowry, saying, he “obviously got crossed up between ‘immigrants’ (short i) and migrants (long i) ― started mispronouncing “migrants” with short i” but “instantly corrected himself with no embarrassment because it was patently a mispronunciation.”
Although Lowry didn’t respond to HuffPost’s request for a comment, he did comment on McCarthy’s defense, saying, “Yep, this is exactly what happened—I began to mispronounce the word ‘migrants’ and caught myself halfway through.”
Kelly also chimed in, saying that the accusations against Lowry were “disgusting and obviously leveled by someone” who doesn’t know him.
However, many people on X weren’t convinced by Lowry’s explanation for the weird word slip.