In recent days, the Republican presidential ticket has decided to spread inflammatory lies about one About 15,000-person Immigrant community in a small Ohio town.
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance launched this line of messaging on Monday, when he announced that “Haitian illegal immigrants” are “causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio” and that “people have had their pets kidnapped and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
Every aspect of this claim was untrue. The Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio has a large (if not entirely) legal US resident population. And there’s no evidence that any pets have been kidnapped, let alone eaten, in Springfield recently; Local police and authorities said they No report received Such as animal abuse.
Nevertheless, other GOP senators and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee quickly expanded on Vance’s claim. Subsequently, GOP vice-presidential candidate Dr told his followers In X that in Springfield, “a child was killed by a Haitian immigrant who had no right to be here.”
That was also untrue. Vance was referring to the death of 11-year-old Aiden Clark (which the Trump campaign had preached before) but Clark was not murdered. Rather, he died in a car accident in which a Haitian immigrant who did not have a driver’s license collided with a school bus. Clark’s father begged Trump’s campaign to stop exploiting his son’s death to spread hate.
Then, at Tuesday’s presidential debate — the biggest political stage of this campaign season — former President Donald Trump repeated his running-mate’s lie, saying, “In Springfield, they’re eating dogs. People who come in are eating cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people who live there.”
There is nothing new about Trump inciting xenophobia for political gain. Republicans have been campaigning for a Muslim ban and Mass deportation For almost a decade. Yet the GOP ticket’s smear campaign against Springfield’s Haitian community is uniquely damaging.
Trump’s demonization of an entire category of immigrants is dangerous. But when he advocated for a Muslim ban in his first presidential election, he did not show concern for his followers and hatred for worshipers of a particular mosque or sect.
With this new smear, Trump and his running mate are inciting hatred for a separate group of 15,000 people in one place. This dramatically increases the risk that their campaign of dehumanization will lead to violence. And indeed, on Both Thursday and FridaySpringfield was forced to close its public schools and municipal buildings in response to the bomb threat. Meanwhile, a Haitian Community Center There are threatening phone calls in town and Haitian families keeping their children at home Fearing for their safety.
The link between such predation of the innocent and the Republicans’ gleeful promotion of AI-generated cats is allegedly interrupted by the existence of the Haitians of Springfield, at least for anyone who believes in the equal dignity of all human life. And the fact that Vance begged his social media followers Keep spreading such defamatory memes, Equally shameful, at the expense of the safety of his own constituents.
Ugliness is the point
Yet all of this raises the question: Why do Trump and Vance believe it is in their interest to advertise such moral bankruptcy and recklessness?
A campaign on the Republican ticket to incite racial hatred in a single municipality cannot be construed as ill-considered or impulsive. Of course, Trump routinely makes outrageous statements motivated by political calculations that he just witnessed on Fox News.
But Vance is nothing if not a ruthless and self-disciplined fighter. One cannot rise from humble origins to Yale Law School without the ability to filter one’s thoughts or rationally pursue one’s goals. And a man worthy of comparison to Trump An opium in 2016And then became an apologist for his rebellion only a few years later, when that posture became politically viable, apparently willing to do most anything in a calculated bid for power.
Vance didn’t just scar Springfield’s Haitian community for once. He chose to double and triple down on that smear, Repetition It’s at it again Friday morning in an X post, where he blames Haitian immigrants for bringing “infectious diseases” to Ohio (without presenting any evidence to back up that timeless nativist trope).
So why would a ticket with strong incentives to project moderation and reassure swing voters choose to resort to direct hatred against a small community, even after their words have already been met with bomb threats?
I suspect the point is ugly.
Republicans have a big advantage on immigration issues. Recently New York Times/Siena College In polls of likely voters, voters favor Trump over Kamala Harris on immigration by a margin of 53 to 43 percent. That is consistent with the finding other nationalities And Battleground state vote
Surveys of Americans’ views on immigration policy tell a similar story. In Gallup Polls, For the first time in 20 years, a majority of Americans say they want to reduce immigration, while only 16 percent say they want to increase it. A recent one Axios/The Harris Poll survey A majority of voters support the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
If voters choose to support the candidate who best represents their views on immigration, Trump will win in a landslide. From this, it follows that the more voters think about immigration on Election Day, the better off Trump and Vance will be.
It is not easy to get the media to focus on any given issue or storyline over others. Yet precisely because Vance’s attack on Haitian immigrants in Springfield was so provocative, it made great Amount Media coverage.
What’s more, because Trump and Vance’s behavior is so repugnant to liberal values, it has provoked Democratic politicians And commentators advertise their sympathy for immigrants and concern for their welfare.
The calculation here is that this might push a swing voter to the right, even if they find Vance’s behavior distasteful. That voter can disavow Vance’s cat memes and still understand from the conversation around them that Republicans are the tough party on immigration.
On the Republican ticket, if this reading is correct, voters are looking for someone who can do an ugly job. The health of our republic, and the safety of its most vulnerable residents, depends on getting this wrong.
