It was earlier this month when Donald Trump and JD Vance launched an ugly and racist offensive against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, falsely accusing them of being animal-eating, disease-ridden thieves. A dangerous national firestorm soon followed, including threats of violence.
What may not be immediately clear to the public is that the offensive is not over yet. The New Republic noted:
Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that the cities he smeared with anti-immigrant lies were actually suffering “hostile takeovers” by immigrants, insisting that immigrants are “taking over” cities across America. During a campaign stop in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump continued to escalate his violent rhetoric against immigrant populations in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado.”
In the same remarks, the former president said that “illegals” are “wreaking havoc” in Springfield, despite the fact that the Haitian immigrants entered the United States legally, and the only people responsible for wreaking havoc in the Ohio community are members of the Republican party. The party’s presidential ticket.
A day earlier, Trump campaigned in Georgia, mocking the accents of Haitian immigrants and saying they will “have to” leave the country despite the positive impact they are having in Springfield.
The day before, Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania where, referring to Haitian immigrants, he said, “You gotta get the hell out of them” because they “destroyed” Springfield. His followers responded by chanting, “Send them back! Send them back!”
If there was another moment in this campaign as sickening as this, I can’t think of it.
His running mate, who ostensibly represents the community, is also not letting up. After playing a direct role in choosing this radical and unnecessary fight, Vance complained at a meeting this week about news organizations daring to tell the public the truth about immigrants in Springfield.
A few days earlier, the Ohio senator challenged reporters to go to Springfield and get the whole story — uncaring of the fact that when a Wall Street Journal reporter did just that, Vance’s lies actually looked worse.
All the while, local Republican officials have continued to confirm that Trump and Vance’s claims remain the opposite of reality. Even the editors of the local Springfield newspaper condemned the senator’s lies as “unbecoming his office.”
It was against this backdrop that the senator implored reporters to “tell the truth,” even as he expressed total indifference to the truth.
As for why exactly the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates won’t abandon this particular lie, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer had a smart piece along these lines, explaining: “What’s going on here is emblematic of the strategy of the Trump campaign, which is trying to make race the big issue of the campaign, through incessant trolling, lying and bullying from both the press and the Harris camp.
Adam added: “The theory is that by boosting the salience of race – a reliable winner with huge swathes of the electorate – they can offset the unpopularity of the Trump campaign’s actual policy agenda: its plans to ban abortion. to withdraw protection for pre-existing conditions. in the Affordable Care Act, deregulate Big Business and lower taxes for the wealthy while raising them for everyone else. The campaign wants people — especially white people — to think about race, and hopes these types of calls will activate the necessary number of voters in key swing states, where the electorate is more conservative than the country as a whole.”
With this in mind, it is likely that the Republican offensive against Springfield will continue over the next forty days.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
