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Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has spent the past week spreading heinous lies about Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio. “They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said during his debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia last week, echoing nonsense first elevated by JD Vance based on little more than internet rumors. And a new report that tried to follow up on Vance’s “evidence” has proved yet again that he’s full of shit.
The Wall Street Journal earnestly tried to track down stories of people in Springfield who said their pets had been abducted or eaten. A reporter visited Anna Kilgore, a woman in the town who filed a police report in late August because she worried her cat Miss Sassy had been “taken by Haitian neighbors,” after she couldn’t find her.
The Vance campaign pointed to Kilgore and her story as proof that Haitian immigrants were actually eating domestic animals. But it simply wasn’t true. As the Journal reports, the cat “actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement.” And Kilgore, who’s a Trump supporter, now seems to have regrets.
“Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app,” the Journal writes.
But it’s not just that one story. Vance has tried to claim he has a mountain of “evidence” that migrants are eating cats, dogs, and geese from local parks. And they all turn out to be garbage. NBC News talked with a woman in Springfield, Erika Lee, who was behind one of the Facebook posts that far-right influencers elevated online before Vance really kicked it into high gear. It turns out Lee’s post was based on something she’d heard from “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she had no first-hand knowledge of anything like that happening.
“I feel for the Haitian community,” Lee told NBC News. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”
Local government officials, including Republicans, have said there’s no evidence that Haitian immigrants have been eating pets. Springfield Police Division has stressed the same, telling NBC News, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
The Wall Street Journal also tried to fact-check several of the other claims being made by Vance and his online legion of far-right influencers about Haitian migrants in Ohio. And none of them turned out to be true. For example, Vance has repeatedly said on the Sunday political TV shows that Haitians are causing an uptick in disease in Springfield. But the Journal reports a decline in communicable diseases since 2015 for the vast majority of infections that have been tracked.
From the Journal:
Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023—the lowest since 2015. The tuberculosis case numbers in the county are so low (four in 2023, three in 2022, one in 2021) that any little movement can bring a big percentage jump. HIV cases did increase to 31 in 2023, from 17 in 2022 and 12 in 2021. Overall, sexually transmitted infection cases decreased to 965 in 2023, the lowest since 2015.
Amazingly, Vance had the gall to blame the media for the lies he’s spreading about immigrants during a rally Tuesday in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
“I think the media has a responsibility to fact check the residents of Springfield, not lie about them,” Vance said in an absolutely stunning statement.
The purpose of this coordinated campaign to pick on immigrants to the U.S. is to dehumanize them and make them legitimate targets for violence. Trump himself makes that fact very blunt when he refers to immigrants as “animals.”
“The Democrats say please don’t call them animals, they’re humans. I said no, they’re not humans, they’re not humans; they’re animals,” Trump said at an infamous speech in Michigan back in April.
Springfield has been under a state of constant heightened anxiety ever since Vance helped focus attention on the town. Hospitals, schools, and government buildings are getting bomb threats. Schools have been periodically closed over the threats and police are now deployed as the town tries to live with the nation’s eyes on them. Trump is reportedly planning to visit Springfield “soon,” according to NBC News, though it’s not clear when that might happen. Failed presidential candidate and Trump supporter Vivek Ramaswamy has tweeted that he’s holding a town hall in Springfield on Thursday.
I’m going to visit Springfield, OH on Thursday. Hoping to have a town hall with local residents, not to stoke more controversy but to have open & honest dialogue about mass migration. The community says they need help, not division. To that end, I’d like to make a charitable…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) September 15, 2024
Trump and Vance are almost certainly spreading these lies about immigrants not just because they’re vile human beings, but because they’re desperate as Kamala Harris gains significant ground in the polls. The Morning Consult poll just released on Tuesday has Harris up against Trump 51% to 45%.
Other generally respected polls also have Harris beating Trump in the popular vote, though it will ultimately come down to how the Democrat performs in crucial battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Thankfully, Harris seems to be doing well in those states as well, with other states like Georgia and Arizona back in play after President Joe Biden was polling very poorly there before dropping out of the race in late July.
FiveThirtyEight’s state-level polling average shows Harris up 2.3 points in Michigan, up 1.7 points in Pennsylvania, and 2.7 points in Wisconsin. And Trump is up just 0.5 points in Georgia and 0.1 points in Arizona.
No one knows what will happen when Americans go to the polls on November 5 and there’s no telling how much worse things will get for Springfield in the next 48 days before the election. Republicans seem to think spreading internet rumors is a winning strategy. But here’s hoping they’re wrong and Trumpism is finally kicked to the curb once and for all.
