Trump’s gambit is bad, but Vance’s is even worse. He’s one of Ohio’s senators; these are his constituents. How can he endanger them like this?
Former president Donald Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance attend a remembrance ceremony on the 23rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, in New York City. (Adam Gray / AFP via Getty Images)
At the top of his golf course Friday morning, in Rancho Palos Verdes, California—with its staggering views of the Pacific Ocean and that mesmerizing coastline—Donald Trump announced that, if reelected, he would kick off his promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants in landlocked, rundown but reviving Springfield, Ohio, where he and his despicable beta-male running mate JD Vance continue to falsely claim that Haitian immigrants are eating local dogs and cats and pets generally. (Today, Trump added the claim that they were harvesting geese at local parks.)
There were problems with Trump’s logic, as always. First, according to local officials, there is zero evidence anyone is eating pets. Second, the Haitians in Springfield are there legally, with work permits, to help shore up the struggling economy. They would be hard to deport, Donald; even Ohio’s GOP Governor Mike DeWine and Republican Springfield Mayor Rob Rue defend them.
Also, Trump claimed he’d be deporting Venezuelans from Springfield, but they aren’t there. There reportedly are some Venezuelans in Aurora, Colorado, and Trump said that would also be an early mass deportation target. I guess he got confused. As always.
It wasn’t enough that the Trump-Vance racist lies have led to bomb threats and the evacuation of Springfield City Hall and two local elementary schools. Elementary schools. Really? They are bearing down on their lies. They are enjoying the fact that these immigrants also happen to be Black. Meanwhile, former Democrat Marianne Williamson should be excommunicated from the community of the decent for endorsing the Trump/Vance lie by noting Haitians have been known to practice “voodoo.”
One of the things that I think is so remarkable, and tragic, is the only known Ohio example of someone eating a cat involved a mentally ill woman in Canton, Ohio, last July. We don’t have enough mental health care in this country, for anyone. But native-born Americans are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants. We’ve all known that for a long time. Trump knows it too. But he and Vance traded in what is essentially a kind of blood libel. These are vicious, bloody people, who want to take our nearest and dearest (oh, they also lie about these immigrants raping young white women, so it’s not just about pets).
We also learned today that the neo-Nazi “Blood Tribe” had made a point of pushing these false Springfield allegations into the public sphere, and ultimately all the way to Trump and Vance. These Blood Tribe creeps won the day.
Leading Ohio Republicans, to their credit, are upset. DeWine denounced the Trump-Vance lies. “We need help, not hate. We need people to believe the best about the community,” Mayor Rob Rue told MSNBC Friday afternoon. “We need [Trump and Vance to] understand what their words are doing to Springfield, Ohio.” Asked if he was worried about the potential of violence, he answered: “I’m definitely concerned.”
Trump lost his debate with Kamala Harris, badly. He was beaten, in his words, “like a dog” (decent people don’t beat dogs, but he’s not decent and that’s one of his favorite expressions). If anything, though, Vance’s gambit is worse. He’s one of Ohio’s senators; these are his constituents. How can he endanger them like this?
But he just keeps escalating, like his boss, the last couple of days. Recently, he went back 30 years to claims that Haitians are also spreading AIDS. The Haitian Times reports that many families are reporting threats and vandalism, and keeping their children home from school.
Of course, as Kamala Harris likes to say, tough times also bring out the heroes. Two Springfield heroes are Nathan and Danielle Clark, whose 11-year-old son, Aiden, was killed in a school bus crash involving a Haitian immigrant last year.
“Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose,” Clark said. “Morally bankrupt politicians—Bernie Moreno, Chip Roy, JD Vance, and Donald Trump—they have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain.
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth.
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“They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the Border crisis, and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed nor have they ever been allowed to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. Please stop the hate.”
I wish we could, Nathan. I wish we could. But these are just terrible people.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.