How Trumpism Rots a Small City

In claiming to be a champion of the residents of Springfield, Ohio, Trump and his acolytes have ripped them apart.

The drip-drip-drip of former GOP officials endorsing Kamala Harris hasn’t stopped yet. Alberto Gonzalez, former attorney general and White House counsel in the George W. Bush administration, said in a Politico op-ed this morning that he was endorsing Harris due to “the necessity of electing a president who respects the rule of law to safeguard our liberties and way of life.” Happy Thursday.

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A Trump supporter's pickup truck is parked at a rally held by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on October 27, 2016 in Springfield, Ohio. Trump spent the day campaigning in Ohio. With less than two weeks to go until election day, Donald Trump continues to campaign in tight battleground states. (Photo by Maddie McGarvey/Getty Images)

Fear and Loathing in Springfield, Ohio

—Andrew Egger

At first, it seemed like this week’s “MAGA accuses Haitian migrants of pet murder in Springfield, Ohio” story would be just a bizarro news blip.

Then Donald Trump embraced the invented narrative on live TV to an audience of tens of millions during the debate: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats . . . The people on television say, my dog was taken and used for food.” And the rest of the Republican spin brigade trudged wearily after him.

“I’ve heard conflicting reports,” Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said on CNN last night. “There’s a lot of information on the internet that this is happening.”

Meanwhile, a horde of YouTubers and right-wing influencers have descended on Springfield, all hoping to find smoking-gun evidence of pet-cheffery in order to give proof to the lie they’ve helped launch. What they’ve found is locals echoing back their own rumors to them: “Then I heard that stuff on Facebook,” one Springfield woman told Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, “and I thought, I better watch my dogs!”

This point bears repeating. What do many residents of Springfield itself have in common with Bill Hagerty, a random shill from two states away? They’re all just repeating nonsense they saw on the internet. Not a single person who has lost a pet of their own has come forward with their story. But plenty of Springfield natives are now convinced that Haitian immigrants one subdivision over are snatching dogs and cats by the truckload.

Has there ever been a better microcosm of our Trumpified politics? A small town, strained by a wave of new migrants, thrust into the national spotlight by opportunistic politicians and conservative hucksters, churned through a balkanized media ecosystem that lets false rumors spread like weeds. Trump says he wants to protect these communities. He ends up dividing them, inflaming tensions within them, all while using them as political pawns.

The migration of thousands of Haitians to Springfield, attracted by warehouse and manufacturing jobs, has created real tensions: strained social services, language barriers, rising rents. A car crash involving a Haitian driving without a U.S. license killed an 11-year-old boy, Aiden Clark.

But what’s most notable about this story (like so many others) is how much of the prejudice underlying it is whipped up from outside the affected community. Last month, a man showed up to speak at a Springfield town hall. “I’ve come to bring a word of warning,” he said. “Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”

The man didn’t live in Springfield. He said his name was “Nathaniel Higgers,” and he was a representative of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe. (“Nate Higgers” is a common gag name among white supremacists, for reasons I hope I don’t have to explain.)

More polished MAGA types won’t go that far, obviously. But they too are more than happy to raise the temperature on local racial tensions to get a bump of political enthusiasm out of their national base. JD Vance, who continues to stoke the ridiculous pet-eating story, has also caricatured the more serious issues:

“Do you know what’s confirmed?” he tweeted Tuesday. “That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.”

The same evening of Vance’s tweet, at a Springfield town meeting, Aiden’s father denounced the senator’s invocation of his son.

“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man,” Nathan Clark said. “I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”

Spreading racist rumors about Haitians eating cats is a scandal. Forcing a grieving father to have to make these remarks is a tragedy.

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Be Like Taylor Swift, President Bush

—William Kristol

The secret ballot is a wonderful thing. The right to say or not to say what you want is a wonderful thing. Living in a free country is a wonderful thing.

It is a free country. So of course we all have the right to remain silent about our vote this November.

But with rights come duties. The Declaration of Independence links the two:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This fall, in our two hundred and forty-eighth year of independence, we have a decision to make. We have a choice between one candidate whose political career has been a long train of abuses and attempted usurpations, and another whose victory is consistent with our future security. A decent respect to the opinions of our fellow citizens suggests that we should offer them our judgment about this decision, and declare our choice.

Taylor Swift has done so. She explains that Kamala Harris “fights for the rights and causes” Swift believes in. She judges Harris to be “a steady-handed, gifted leader,” and thinks that “we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”

And so, Swift concludes, “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”

Swift is, I suppose, primarily addressing her fans. But I choose to think of her as also speaking to other Americans who have the standing to influence the judgment of their fellow citizens. I think of Swift as speaking to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and to Condoleezza Rice and John Kelly and Jim Mattis.

They are all patriots and public servants whose careers have been marked by doing their duty. If Taylor Swift can step up and speak out, surely they can too.

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Quick Hits: Trouble at Mar-a-Lago

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and lunatic MAGA influencer Laura Loomer have long been two of Donald Trump’s most loyal bulldogs. Now they’re at each other’s throats. When Loomer accompanied Trump to the debate this week as his guest, many noted that she’d just days before been making insanely racist remarks about Kamala Harris online: “If Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.”

Greene didn’t like this. She called the post “flat out racist” and said it made “President Trump look bad.” She told Loomer to delete it.

Loomer, predictably, went berserk. In a series of posts, she called Greene “two faced,” “a woman with no convictions” who “sells herself” to the highest bidder “like a hooker,” “the most miserable lying bitch in Congress,” and “a very jealous woman who is now working with MSNBC to attack [Trump’s] greatest Allies” who “must be condemned by all of MAGA.”

As for the tweet, Loomer insisted it was all merely a joke. This sort of thing is a pattern for Loomer: In July, she called Harris “a drug using prostitute.” As for why Harris doesn’t have biological children, she once said: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.” Truly bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

There’s lots we could say here about all the structural rot in Trump’s movement that this episode reveals—how a person like Greene who became a MAGA celebrity by attacking the previous “establishment” from the lunatic right was always destined to get outflanked by somebody still more shameless and conspiratorial in the hearts of the base. But this newsletter is already a bit long, so instead we’ll just say:

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