American Reprobate

Trump's Sleazy Bigotry Has Consequences

Nearly everything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth is rancid, but some things are more disgraceful than others and deserve a closer look. This week we had an industrial-strength fecal effusion, the claim that Haitian immigrants eating dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Here is what he said in the debate:

You’re going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject,” he said. “What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

None of it was true. Although the loathsome Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty had this to say on CNN last night: “I’ve heard conflicting reports…There’s a lot of information on the internet that this is happening.”

There is also information on the internet that Donald Trump is a Martian. The problem is, the casual, bigoted crap that foolish, ugly people like Hagerty and his Orange hero peddle does have consequences in the real world. Like this, from the Springfield, Ohio, News-Sun:

Multiple city, county and school buildings around Springfield were closed Thursday after a bomb threat “to multiple facilities throughout Springfield,” according to a city statement released Thursday morning. Springfield City Hall was evacuated around 8:30 a.m.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said everyone who was in the City Hall building was moved out and is safe. Rue would not comment on the precise language of the threat but said it came from someone claiming to be from Springfield, and mentioned frustration with the city related to Haitian immigration issues.

Now, I’ve been keeping occasional tabs on the Haitian immigrant community for forty years, ever since I learned that they had the highest workforce participation rate in New York City, which was then the locus of my reporting. I rechecked the stats today, using the Perplexity AI site: Nationally, Haitians have a 69% workforce participation rate v. 62% for native-born Americans. (Black women immigrants, especially those from Africa, have the highest workforce participation rate—over 80%—of any immigrant group.)

Why is this important? Because Trump is peddling a slander that is undoubtedly race-based and as anti-American as you can get. If there is such a thing as a “model minority,” the Haitians may be it. They take the American dream seriously. They work hard. They push their kids to achieve in school. Their goal is assimilation, not some tortured victimhood. They should be celebrated as a reminder of the bounties this country offers to those who play by the rules. We want and need people like these to come here.

But there is more to the story than that. Andrew Eggers, in The Bulwark, describes the insane, ugly blowback of Trump’s dog-eating lie in the town where it happened:

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?

Eggers goes on to write that an influx of Haitian immigrants—who are, of course, working their butts off—has caused some problems:

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.

Of course, J. D. Vance, in his desperate rush to shovel himself below the bottom of the cesspool, has made an issue of the death of Aiden Clark. Here is what Clark’s father says about that:

“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.”

Now, there’s an American citizen of honor! Donald Trump is the opposite. He denigrates our nation on an hourly basis. The corrosive effects seep down into the marrow of too many of his supporters. Their greasy willingness—their need—to buy this swill is infuriating and beyond depressing.

Missed Opportunity?

What if Kamala Harris had said: “Obviously, I disagree with my opponent on many issues and, especially, the way he conducts himself. But he did do one good thing as President—and I’d like to thank him for the rapid development of Covid vaccines—which he called Operation Warp Speed. That saved a lot of lives. Those vaccines you gave us were a Godsend.”

I wonder how Trump would have responded, given the anti-vax proclivities of some of his supporters. Would he have taken credit for one of the true achievements of his time in office? Or would he dodge it, worried that the crazies would stay-at-home on November 5? What would be the good of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s endorsement then?

I also wonder how Trump would have responded to a moment of graciousness. There is more than one way to demonstrate his mental instability—the easy way is to bait him, which Harris did brilliantly, but it would have been interesting to watch him struggle with unwanted praise.

And What Now for Kamala?

Yes, her debate performance was impressive. It was cool, smart, professionally evasive—all of which are words that live in a lexicon adjacent to, well, slick. She clearly has gifts, but she was prepped up the wazoo, sometimes embarrassingly so: Her nervous answer to the first question, “Are Americans better off than they were four years ago?” circled immediately back to an overcooked, over-rehearsed reference to her middle class childhood. Now, it was a first question in a moment of monumental pressure, so I’ll give her a pass. But a problem looms:

Unless Americans start seeing her deal with questions that aren’t easy to answer, they’re going to start wondering if she’s real. The simplest way for her to deal with this is to have a series of town meetings—as Rep. Jim Clyburn suggested the other day—and to make sure the meetings aren’t packed with supporters. She needs to field negative questions that are awkwardly phrased—unlike the deathlessly polished queries of debate moderators or hotshot anchors in one-on-one interviews. (Under the tutelage of Roger Ailes, Richard Nixon used this tactic—especially the negative questions—to demonstrate his brains and courage in 1968.)

You have to wonder about the state of political consulting. It is a collapsed art on the Republican side, given that Trump simply won’t be coached. A strange thing has happened to the Democrats, too. Biden’s consultants, and now Harris’s, have become political condoms, working overtime to prevent their candidates from coming directly in contact with reality. This might have been necessary with Biden. It can’t be with Harris. She has got to be exposed to difficult situations. I’d like to see her say something unpopular, maybe about the federal deficit—after all, Dems are the party who take that stuff seriously. (Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”)

I’d like to see her make a mistake and recover from it. I’d like to see her palpably thinking in public. The appearance of thoughtfulness is a quality much prized by discerning voters. (I used to marvel at Bill Clinton’s ability to pretend to be thinking, to be struggling with an answer at his town meetings in 1992, and then rattling off a perfect paragraph.) I’d love to see her say, just once, “I don’t know the right answer to that is yet. I’m going to have to study it more and I promise I’ll get back to you…But here’s why it’s a difficult question and deserves some thought.”

Yes, people want a strong Commmander in Chief. They want a leader who commands respect—and Harris has been proving she can play that role. But they also want a human being. The odd thing about Donald Trump is that deeply flawed humanity is the only quality that he can honestly convey. It’s probably what made him credible. It’s probably what got him elected. Kamala Harris might take a tiny lesson from that.