Yesterday Was a Hell of a Week
We had a flood of political news this week. In the five days since my last newsletter, I’ve made two dozen notes of stories to talk about.
This is not normal.
The reason we have had a flood of news stories is Donald Trump is corrupt, racist, and incompetent. We have had racist presidents, corrupt presidents, and incompetent presidents, but none combined all three such qualities in such a unique package.
As Trump and Vance have not moved off of vilifying immigrants, and seem intent on making it their central campaign message, let’s dive into the Springfield, OH story.
Patient zero for the false attacks on Haitian immigrants has been identified. A woman posted in a neighborhood Facebook group that her neighbor’s friend’s daughter’s cat had been attacked by Haitian immigrants. She didn’t even get the chain of the story correct. Her neighbor had told her a friend’s acquaintance had said their cat was kidnapped by Haitians. In evidentiary circles, this would be called “fourth-hand” or “useless.” This story got picked up by the right on social media until it was reinforced by Trump and Vance and has now been dominated campaign coverage despite being completely false.
Facing terror threats inspired by the presidential ticket he supports, Ohio governor Mike Dewine has published an op-ed defending Springfield’s immigrants community. He accurately points out the Haitians in Springfield are there legally and contribute a huge boost to the economy in a town that desperately needed workers. Vance has stated he will continue to refer to them as “illegal aliens.” His justification is that Harris… used the law… to allow them to be here legally. (Harris had nothing at all to do with this. They’re here legally because they have followed the law.)
Per reporting in the Wall Street Journal, Trump and Vance were told repeatedly their stories of immigrants eating up local pets was not true. They did not care. For “evidence” Vance has begun pointing out a police report where a woman’s cat was missing and she suspected her Haitian neighbors. This is true. She did call the police and suspected it was Haitians. Except her cat showed up in her basement a few days later. Once again, the immigrant community in Springfield did nothing at all, and was still vilified for it.
Vance is now repeating lies about Springfield’s infectious disease rate and crime rate going up because of the Haitians there. Neither claim is true. Both rates have gone down over the last four years.
Joining in on the racism, we have Senator John Kennedy (no relation). Kennedy was interviewing Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, and repeatedly asked her if she supported Hamas and Hezbollah. Despite her saying she did not, Kennedy couldn’t get off the script his staff had created and said “you can’t bring yourself to say no, can you?”
Trump isn’t confining his attack on immigrants to Springfied. He has vowed to reinstate his racist “travel ban” and that America won’t take refugees from “terror infested” areas. The comparison of foreign born people to insects infesting an area has a long history associated with fascist regimes. During the first attempt at banning Muslims from entering the US, mass protests quickly formed in the major airports. I spent the weekend at a local one and met several family members of people who had been blocked from entering the United States. All had legal documentation to enter the US. Some were permanent legal residents or even US citizens. In multiple instances, we were detaining legal residents who had been given that status for assisting our military during the Iraq War.
But what struck me the most was a gentleman I met holding this sign:
This gentleman, who had done nothing wrong, was being targeted as a villain by Donald Trump because of his religion. Over seven years later and we are right back in this moment.
Moving on to abortion, Trump continues to say that women are very excited Roe was overturned. In an all caps rant, he said women don’t even think about abortion any more since it’s up to the states. Major media outlets still fail to capture his bizarre stream-of-consciousness meanders as you can’t fit them into a sentence or two so the entire thing is included here:
Meanwhile, as predicted, there is confirmation of at least two women dying from being unable to access emergency medical care which would have saved their lives due to state abortion laws. There will be more. But Donald Trump says women don’t need to think about this. Harris has made these issues a centerpiece of her campaign, even doing events with family members of the women who died needlessly.
Trump is going to sue the Department of Justice over the Mar-a-Lago search which found the classified documents he stole, hid from the government, and lied about having. Evan Stone of Legal Eagle recently posted a long form analysis of how ridiculous this suit is. Trump’s lawyers ever since the 2020 election have been laughably bad. In the DC election interference case, his lawyers filed a brief late because they thought they had until midnight on a 5PM deadline. While this may seem like a minor mistake, it’s this sort of sloppiness that permeated all of his actions as president.
Meanwhile at Trump rallies, Republicans continue to attack Harris for merely being an adoptive mother and not a biological mother, continue to blame China for “releasing” the covid virus, continue to say global warming will increase the amount of seafront property (um, no), and continue to say raising taxes on imported goods will lower the prices for those goods. In a new claim, however, Donald Trump says that the primary threat to domestic manufacture of cars is… nuclear war. In a desperate attempt to spin his debate performance, Trump is saying he got a great reaction from the debate audience which is a fantastic feat as there was no debate audience.
In the past, any one of these statement would have ended a politicians campaign and perhaps their entire political career. In 2024, it will not, because Republican voters ignore all of his lies, his delusions, and his incompetence so they can support his racist and misogynist policies.
As of writing, there are 44 days until the 2024 election.
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