It was about a month ago when Donald Trump and JD Vance began heavily promoting racist conspiracy theories about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. The dangerous consequences – bomb threats, closed buildings, canceled events, terrified residents, death threats, etc. – soon followed. Furthermore, these fallout are still ongoing, as is the Republican Party’s presidential ticket lean into it their lies.
But from a purely political perspective, one of the things that made the Republican Party’s Springfield fiasco notable was the division within the party. While Republicans’ message at the national level focused on imaginary animal-eating thieves from Haiti, Republicans’ message at the local level was qualitatively different.
The Republican mayor of Springfield and the Republican governor of Ohio not only opposed Trump and Vance’s lies, they also urged their party’s candidates to stop misleading the public.
About a month later, a similar dynamic unfolds in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
As with Springfield, Trump blatantly lied for several days about the government’s response to the deadly storm. And as with Springfield, the former president’s lies are causing real damage on the ground. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, officials have warned that the lies and conspiracy theories of the election season are “hampering relief efforts.”
Disaster relief groups and lawmakers from Trump’s own party are urging people to stop spreading unsubstantiated rumors about relief efforts. The American Red Cross issued a statement disputing false claims about its response, saying such disinformation “is disrupting our ability to provide critical relief and impacting the disaster workers who have put their own lives on hold to help those in need. ” FEMA even resorted to launching a disinformation page on its website to debunk rumors about her Helene reaction.
After Trump’s lies about Springfield were exposed and local officials from his own party begged him to be more responsible, the Republican candidate decided to keep lying.
And after Trump’s lies about Helene’s response were exposed, and officials — some Democrats, some Republicans, and some with no meaningful connection to politics — also urged him and his conspiratorial allies to be more responsible be, the former president said again decided to continue lying anyway, indifferent to the dangerous consequences.
Clarissa-Jan’s report indeed appeared on Saturday morning, the day after the Republican candidate tracked are disinformation campaign related to hurricane relief. Hours later, Trump, no doubt aware that his lies had been discredited, continued to repeat the same false claims.
A day later, Trump pushed the same garbage. The next day he did it again.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said in a written statement: “The last thing Helene’s victims need right now is political posturing, finger-pointing or conspiracy theories that will only hurt response efforts.”
That’s true, but what Helene’s victims “need now” is of little importance to the Republican Party’s presidential candidate: what matters to Trump, with 29 days left before Election Day, is Trump, not the suffering families and communities.
The editors of the Charlotte Observer added this weekend: “Shame on Donald Trump for the deterioration [the] tragedy with political lies.” If the former president were still capable of feeling ashamed, he obviously wouldn’t engage in such indefensible antics.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
