David Leopold op-ed in Cleveland Plain-Dealer among key commentaries highlighting dangers of Trump and Vance anti-immigrant lies, conspiracies.
Washington, DC — A host of analysts and commentators are highlighting that Donald Trump and JD Vance’s campaign seems increasingly unhinged in its obsessive focus on lurid anti-immigrant lies and conspiracies. Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, recently assessed, “Every sentence from Donald Trump seems to contain a noun and a verb and a dehumanizing and dangerous lie about immigrants.” But Cárdenas notes there is a great deal of risk in this strategy: “Trump and Vance are making a bet that the number of voters attracted by the anti-immigrant red meat outweighs those American voters who are driven away by the escalating levels of lying, racism, threats to deport legal immigrants and implicit calls for violence and vigilantism. We are seeing a moment of backlash where people are talking about the vile Republican opposition to immigration, but probably not in a way that helps the GOP cause.”
Notably, key voices are not just highlighting the obvious lies touted by Trump and Vance, but also are highlighting the dangerous arguments they are relying on that echo very dark and ominous moments from the past. The tropes and nationalist arguments deployed by the campaign are linked to violence and signal the underlying Trump desperation and motivations behind their ugly xenophobia. As Greg Sargent succinctly put it in an insightful column in The New Republic, “Trump wants this debate to be as charged with hate and rage as possible … for Trump, the argument over Springfield has nothing to do with what’s actually happening in Springfield. It’s about fomenting violent hatreds in order to seize power.”
Among the other key voices, read this Cleveland Plain-Dealer op-ed by America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold, the Cleveland-based former President and Chief Counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and Chair of immigration for UB Greensfelder, “Anti-Haitian blood libel has no place in Ohio,” noting in part:
“Blood libels fueled numerous pogroms against Jews throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times. The Nazis used blood libels as a central theme of their antisemitic propaganda. Stunningly, blood libel is alive and well in American politics today. In the midst of the 2024 presidential campaign, the blood libel has morphed into the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, steal pets from their neighbors and kill and eat them. True, no one has alleged that Haitians are kidnapping and killing American children. But for many Americans, dogs and cats are not merely house pets; they are members of the family.
So falsely claiming Haitian immigrants eat dogs and cats may be slightly less horrifying than claiming they kill children to harvest their blood, but the trope is consistent with the age-old blood libel against Jews. And the consequences are potentially just as deadly.
…Since 2017, we’ve seen a marked increase in far right conspiracy theories and a rise in antisemitic and racial violence in the United States, with Americans bearing witness to mass shootings of Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, of Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, and of Black Americans at a grocery store in Buffalo … Ohioans deserve better from candidates for national office than to be subjected to dangerous, racist lies rooted in centuries-old antisemitic tropes and racial hatred.”
The hometown newspaper of Springfield, Ohio, the Springfield News Sun, wrote a blistering editorial, “JD Vance’s behavior is unbecoming of his office,” noting in part,
“History, of course, offers no shortage of atrocities committed when the truth is viewed as an inconvenient obstacle in your way … This desperate grasping at straws from Sen. Vance has become an embarrassment not only to himself, but to Ohio
… We believe his conduct over the past week is unbecoming of a U.S. Senator and violates the public’s trust in the esteemed office. His reckless disregard for truth has endangered members of our community and further undercuts Americans’ faith in government at a time when that faith is already perilously close to depletion. We insist that Sen. Vance immediately stop spreading unsubstantiated, inflammatory rumors about our communities – his constituents. Amplifying hateful rhetoric is not the proper way to draw attention to or address important issues.”
Caitlin Dickerson writes in The Atlantic, “Lies About Immigration Help No One,” noting,
“A growing number of Americans are pointing to immigration as a top concern heading into the election. But a substantive debate on the issue has become impossible, given that Donald Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, are only escalating their use of outright lies and xenophobia in lieu of anything resembling fact-based policy solutions … This complex picture of immigration and its implications calls for the hard work of policy making and statesmanship. Again and again, misinformation and fearmongering have only made things worse.”
In The Washington Post, Ashley Parker captures the larger dark worldview on display in “Donald Trump’s imaginary and frightening world,” noting,
“The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.”
And Michael Bender writes in The New York Times, “On the Trail, Trump and Vance Sharpen a Nativist, Anti-Immigrant Tone,” noting that even by Trump’s own ugly standards,
“…the Trump-Vance team is sharpening the anti-immigrant nativism that fueled the former president’s initial rise to power … Trump has sounded angrier and, at times, more conspiratorial.”
