Recently, the Republican presidential candidate decided to spread inflammatory lies about an immigrant community of roughly 15,000 people living in a small Ohio city.
Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance hammered home the message on Monday, declaring that “Haitian illegal immigrants” are “causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio” and that “people have had their pets kidnapped and eaten by people who should not be in this country.”
This allegation is untrue in every respect. Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian immigrant community is overwhelmingly (if not entirely) made up of legal U.S. residents. And there is absolutely no evidence that any pets have been kidnapped, much less swallowed, in Springfield recently. Local police and authorities say they have not received any reports of such animal cruelty.
But other Republican senators and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee quickly doubled down on Vance’s case. The GOP vice presidential nominee later told supporters at the X that a child had been murdered in Springfield by “Haitian immigrants who had no right to be here.”
This is also not true. Vance was referring to the death of 11-year-old Aiden Clark, which the Trump campaign had previously made public. But Clark was not murdered; he died in a traffic accident when a Haitian immigrant without a driver’s license crashed into his school bus. Clark’s father has pleaded with the Trump campaign to stop using his son’s death to spread hate.
And in the biggest political stage of the season, the presidential debate on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump repeated his running mate’s falsehood, saying, “In Springfield, they eat their dogs. And the people who come there. And they eat their cats. They eat the pets of the people who live there.”
Trump’s stoking xenophobia for political gain is nothing new — the Republican has called for a Muslim ban and mass deportations for nearly a decade — but the GOP candidate’s smear campaign against Springfield’s Haitian community is clearly harmful.
Trump’s demonization of entire categories of immigrants is dangerous, but when he first called for a Muslim ban during the presidential campaign, he did not direct his supporters’ fears and disgust at worshippers at specific mosques or communities.
With this new smear, Trump and his running mate are inciting hatred against a specific group of 15,000 people in one place, dramatically increasing the risk that their dehumanization campaign will lead to violence. And indeed, on both Thursday and Friday, Springfield received bomb threats that forced the closure of public schools and City Hall, while the city’s Haitian community center has received threatening calls and Haitian families remain in their homes, fearing for the safety of their children.
The contrast between these innocent victims and the Republican Party’s willingness to promote an AI-generated cat that is endangered by the presence of Haitians in Springfield is morally nauseating, at least for anyone who believes in the equal dignity of all human life. And the fact that Vance implored his social media followers to continue spreading such slanderous memes at the expense of the safety of his own constituents is equally shameful.
The ugliness is the point
But all of this begs the question: Why do Trump and Vance think it is in their interest to publicize such moral bankruptcy and recklessness?
The Republican candidate’s move to incite ethnic hatred in a single city cannot be understood as thoughtless or impulsive. Certainly, Trump routinely makes inflammatory statements inspired more by something he happens to see on Fox News than by any political calculation.
But Vance remains a ruthless, disciplined and hard worker. To come from a poor background to Yale Law School requires the ability to filter your thoughts and pursue your goals rationally. A man who likened Trump to a drug in 2016 and then became an apologist for his insurrection a few years later, when that stance became politically expedient, is clearly prepared to do any calculated thing to gain power.
Vance didn’t just slander Springfield’s Haitian community once; he chose to repeat the slur a second or third time. In a Friday morning X post, he accused Haitian immigrants of bringing a “disease” to Ohio (without providing any evidence to back up this timeless xenophobic trope).
So why would a candidate who has a strong incentive to project moderate stances and reassure swing voters choose to direct hatred at a small community, even after their words have already sparked bomb threats?
I think the ugliness is the point.
Republicans have a big advantage on immigration, according to a recent New York Times article./A Siena College poll of likely voters found that voters favored Trump over Kamala Harris on immigration, 53% to 43%, a result consistent with other national and battleground state polls.
Polls about Americans’ views on immigration policy have produced similar results: A Gallup poll found that for the first time in 20 years, a majority of Americans want to see less immigration, with only 16% saying they want more. A recent Axios/The Harris Poll found that a majority of voters support mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
If voters support the candidate who best represents their views on immigration, Trump would win in a landslide victory, meaning the more voters think about immigration on Election Day, the better for Trump and Vance.
It’s not easy to get the media to pay attention to certain issues or stories over others, but Vance’s attack on Haitian immigrants in Springfield was so inflammatory that the media gave it a ton of coverage.
Moreover, Trump and Vance’s actions are so antithetical to liberal values that they have prompted Democratic politicians and commentators to tout their sympathy for immigrants and concern for their welfare.
The calculation here is that even if someone is uncomfortable with Vance’s actions, they can move swing voters to the right: They may dislike Vance’s cat memes, but they can read from the conversations around them that the GOP is the party of hard lines on immigration.
If this interpretation is correct, Republican candidates are betting that voters want someone who can get the ugly jobs done. The health of our republic and the safety of our most vulnerable residents depend on this being wrong.
