Washington, DC — America’s Voice has been highlighting how dehumanizing lies and conspiracies are fueling fears and divisions and stoking the possibility of more political violence in Springfield, OH and beyond. In response to the Trump campaign’s relentless lies about Haitian-Americans, Rob Rue, the Republican Mayor of Springfield said, “Any political leader that takes the national stage and has the national spotlight needs to understand the gravity of the words that they have.” And Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican Governor, said: “[T]his is a piece of garbage that was simply not true … This idea that we have hate groups coming in, this discussion just has to stop.”
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The Trump campaign’s instinct to degrade and disparage all immigrants and to continue to spread lies and stoke division is flat-out dangerous. The dehumanizing lies about Haitian-Americans in Springfield are part of the anti-immigrant rhetoric that the right-wing thinks will help animate their base. They don’t seem to care about the downstream consequences, which are already leading to threats against Haitians and the rest of Springfield and could – like those in El Paso and Pittsburgh and Buffalo and elsewhere – again lead to more real violence. More Republicans should join with Gov. DeWine and Mayor Rue to denounce the ongoing lies and conspiracies being purposely spread by the Trump campaign.”
Leading voices and observers are denouncing the Trump and Vance lies and conspiracies and highlighting the dangerous roots and implications of their continued falsehoods, including:
- Philip Bump column in Washington Post, “JD Vance explains the political utility of anti-immigrant hostility,” noting, “Trump, who once disparaged Haiti with an expletive during a meeting with legislators, and Vance are apparently not concerned about all residents of Springfield living safely in the community. They are, however, very concerned that anyone interested in complaining about immigrants should have those complaints heard loudly … Better to have the nation debating whether Black immigrants are or are not semi-human killers than to have it focusing on areas where Harris might have an advantage. So keep those ‘cat memes’ flowing, Trump supporters, whatever the cost to those immigrants and to a community that Vance represents.”
- Michael Hiltzik column in Los Angeles Times, “The Nazi roots of the Trump-Vance smear of Haitian immigrants,” noting, “In European history, blood libels were often the precursors to murderous pogroms directed at Jews; Vance and Trump may imagine that they can stir up hostility to immigrants by blaming immigrants for ‘real suffering and tragedies’ experienced by their neighbors, while dodging responsibility for any violent outbreaks that occur in the wake of their words, but they are like infants playing with fire.”
- Donna Brazile column in The Grio, “Let’s pray that false and racist rhetoric about Haitian immigrants by Trump and Vance don’t lead to racist violence,” noting, “News that the Ku Klux Klan has joined with Trump and Vance to spread the lie about Black immigrants eating cats and dogs brings back frightening memories from my childhood when I was growing up near New Orleans in the 1960s … The Haitians residing legally in Springfield and other cities across our nation deserve their shot at the American Dream, without facing threats based on lies. They are not savages and rapists.”
- Paul Krugman column in New York Times, “How Trump Is Undermining the Economy in Some Struggling Cities,” noting, “In another time and place, the Trump-Vance campaign’s decision to go all in on the unfounded claim that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are stealing and eating pets might be kind of funny. But given where we are as a nation, it’s no joke. The city has been forced to close schools and public buildings in the face of recent bomb threats. Given this reality, it seems almost in bad taste to talk about the economic consequences of this kind of rhetoric. But those consequences are real, and overwhelmingly negative — especially for municipalities like Springfield that have managed to reverse population decline and bolster job growth by embracing immigration. Here, we can see how hate could destroy the chances of economic renewal in parts of the heartland.”
- Greg Sargent column in The New Republic, “Trump’s Ugly Rants About Haitians Suddenly Take On a More Sinister Hue” noting, “Will Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their merry band of MAGA propagandists stop pushing such vile demagoguery about immigrants, now that there’s cause for real concern that this latest iteration could end up getting people hurt or even killed? Of course they won’t. An underappreciated aspect of this sorry saga is that Trump and Vance constantly rhapsodize about places like Springfield, a small metro region in the heartland that has wrestled with postindustrial stagnation and population decline. Yet all of a sudden—and we see this again and again—they are almost pathologically unconcerned with the real-world harms their demagoguery is visiting on the people who live there, including the ones they regard as Real Americans.”
