Careening toward darkness

Migrant fear-mongering is the obvious response of a failing campaign and is a preview of the dark, desperate days to come.

I’m taking a break from your regularly scheduled hard news about elections to make a few brief points on some developments over the past week. You can read my debate analysis at Britain’s i news, which focuses on the overlooked comment made by Donald Trump that alludes to Republicans’ plans to illegally install him as president in November, and check out a story I did at Rolling Stone that shows the far right publication the Federalist soliciting writers from election denial networks in Georgia and Michigan.

The national political press has learned a lot since the long ago days of 2015-16 when it comes to not chasing Donald Trump’s bullshit, and have performed admirably in the face of his and others’ vicious lies about Haitian migrants in Ohio. But one thing that has been largely missing in recent coverage of this developing tragedy is also something very obvious: Trump is doing this because he is losing. 

For those who don’t consume the garbage that Trump and millions of Americans do and need a catch up: lies and false information about Haitian migrants abducting and eating peoples’ pets have gone viral on the American right, based largely on the arrest of a Black woman in August who is not Haitian, appears to have been on drugs, and was apparently eating a cat on someone’s front yard, as well as unfounded claims made by residents of the town, Springfield, Ohio, who have been so unconcerned with these acts that they’ve yet to file a single police report on the matter, law enforcement says. Part of the virality of this story also includes a picture of a Black man carrying a large, dead bird that is from a different time period and city, but that you’ll probably see in short order on one of your right-wing friend’s Facebook feeds.

This crazed and racist madness used to be contained within the dark, right-wing corners of the Internet but because of who Republicans have chosen as their presidential candidate, all of us now need to know about this stuff. Perhaps more to the point, because of who Trump has chosen as his running mate, the Springfield story has gone from those dark corners out into the mainstream. It was JD Vance who has done more than any single person to amplify this story, and so far he’s getting what he wants, in a way.

Following Tuesday night’s debate, Vance was pressed on his amplification of the lies this story involves by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins. Vance told Collins, more or less, that even if some of what he shared about migrants in Springfield was not true, it was important to do so in order to shame the media into reporting about the deleterious effects of immigration on American citizens. 

Read more

• The stolen election narrative to come

• Right-wing militias are gathering for war if they lose in November

• The Christian nationalist threat to democracy

• Something has been lost

Now, reporters are doing just that, and they’re finding what we all expected: there is no truth to the rumors about Haitian migrants eating peoples’ pets, and in fact the harms being caused are not carried out by the migrants, but by the Americans who are getting fired up about all of this and harassing them, or calling in a bomb threat to Springfield’s city hall. (On that last point I had a brief moment just now where I thought, Now wait a minute, someone could have made that threat in defense of the migrants and against people like Trump but, nope, that threat was definitely made because someone who probably supports Trump is pissed off about the lies he’s spreading about migrants in Springfield.)

What this troubling series of events shows is that Trump and the American right are willing to go to any dark lengths they can dream up to try to win this election. Trump got smoked in the debate and he knows it, which is why he said today he won’t do another one. Instead of accepting the loss and moving on he’s decided to distract from his failure to convey a coherent message to the American public by going back to his comfort zone of fear-mongering about immigrants. And why shouldn’t he? That’s been very successful for him. None of this ends well. Whether it’s a migrant being hurt or killed in Springfield or Trump and Republicans pulling out all the stops to try to manhandle this election in his favor, we are careening toward a very dark place as our days get darker this fall.

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P.S. I’m traveling next week to Michigan for a summit on elections where representatives of several secretaries of state will be in attendance. It’s been a very busy few months here and I won’t lie that I’m getting pretty worn down. From covering the RNC in Milwaukee to writing about the Sonya Massey story, the assassination attempt, and all the subsequent madness of election matters in Georgia and elsewhere, I’m feeling pretty tired these days. But I’m grateful for the support of my subscribers and would be glad if those of you who are free subscribers would be willing to level up to a paid subscription for as little as $5 a month. If subscribing isn’t your thing, you can buy me a cup of joe through the Doom Coffee Fund we set up. Thanks, as always, for your support.