It was early last month when Donald Trump helped lead the charge against immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, heavily promoting baseless and racist conspiracy theories. Predictably, there were dangerous consequences – bomb threats, closed buildings, canceled events, terrified residents, death threats, etc. – both for the immigrants and for the wider community.
The backlash, however, did not proceed neatly along partisan lines: Many of those telling the public the truth were state and local officials from the former president’s own party, many of whom urged Trump to stop lying. (He actually didn’t stop lying.)
Shortly thereafter, the public was confronted with eerily similar circumstances: the Republican candidate began lying about the government’s response to Hurricane Helene, spreading a new round of easily discredited talking points and conspiracy theories. Much of the backlash came from state and local officials who, again, were Republicans.
It was against this backdrop that Trump decided to shift his attention to Aurora, Colorado, where – you guessed it – the same thing happened. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump painted a bleak picture of Colorado’s third-largest city at a rally here Friday as he again claimed it had been overtaken by a Venezuelan prison gang. But the city’s police chief told NBC News that Aurora is still “very safe.”
“It’s not overrun. Without a doubt, Aurora is still a very safe city. It is still a beautiful community that is incredibly diverse,” said Chief Todd Chamberlain.
And yet this did not stop the former Republican president from holding a campaign rally in Aurora, where he characterized the community as “invaded and conquered” by migrants who entered the country illegally.
As part of the same remarks, Trump told his followers that local gang members were allowed to shoot police officers. “Did you know the gang has been given permission to kill your police?” he askeddespite the fact that this never happened.
Once again, it is Republican officials who are trying to put things right. Indeed, as Politico reported, it is the city’s Republican mayor — former five-term Republican Rep. Mike Coffman — who has “repeatedly tried to allay fears that his city has been taken over by immigrant gangs.”
As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim added, Coffman also said that claims of Venezuelan gang activity have been “grossly exaggerated and have unfairly damaged the city’s identity and sense of security.”
“The city and the state have not been ‘taken over,’ ‘invaded,’ or ‘occupied’ by migrant gangs,” Coffman concluded.
He, of course, directly contradicted his party’s 2024 candidate, who used identical words and phrases, none of which are true.
A few weeks ago, before Trump even announced his visit to the area, the mayor told NBC News, “I want the former president to come because I want to show him this city. I want to show him that the story is not accurate in any way.”
It was a nice sentiment that tragically missed the point. Trump made up “the story” without regard to its accuracy. He didn’t visit Aurora to find out the truth; he visited Aurora to further his lie.
Will the Republican candidate continue to lie now that he’s been to Aurora? As people in Ohio and North Carolina know all too well, the answer is obvious.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
