Trump’s real witch hunt

Springfield, Ohio has been in the news in the past. In the mid-1960s, it became the first city in Ohio to elect a Black mayor. In the early 1980s, Newsweek magazine said Springfield was one of the nation’s “Dream Cities.” 

And, of course, the city found itself thrust into the spotlight again this month after the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, promoted a false, racist conspiracy against Springfield’s Haitian-American immigrant community, accusing thousands of innocent people who came to America seeking solace from devastating natural disasters and ongoing political violence of stealing and eating people’s pets.

Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, a senator representing Ohio’s constituents — including members of Springfield’s Haitian American community — has also promoted the pet-eating conspiracy over the past month, despite knowing all along that there was no truth to these disgusting rumors.

As reported this week by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the city manager in Springfield debunked the rumors during a phone call with Vance on Sept. 9 — one day before Trump’s debate with Harris — when the vice presidential candidate called the city manager’s office. 

According to the WSJ: “City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield. “He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”

And what did Vance and Trump do with this information? Did they try to tamp down the violent anti-Haitian rhetoric already floating around white-supremacist sites and making its way into mainstream social media posts? No. The Republican candidates for the highest elected positions in the land instead decided to amplify this knowingly false rumor on the debate stage, on social media and in subsequent interviews and rallies. 

Other right-wing politicians and Twitter (now renamed X) owner Elon Musk – himself an immigrant — have also pushed the vile pet-eating conspiracy, amplifying lies about the thousands of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — immigrants who have protected status due to the severity of conditions in Haiti and who have, by all accounts, filled positions at local factories and warehouses that had been struggling to fill job openings as blue-collar Springfield’s population continued to dwindle from its highs of over  in the 1980s. In the weeks since Republicans decided to run with these lies, bomb threats have been directed at government buildings, schools and community centers in Springfield and Haitian immigrant families are living in fear.

Last week, schools in Springfield were forced to close due to the bomb threats. This week, there are police stationed throughout the town’s school buildings. 

Trump, who was recently found guilty of felony crimes by a jury of his peers, likes to talk about how he is a victim of “witch hunts,” but the behavior Trump, Vance and other right-wing figures have shown over the past few weeks is the definition of witch-hunting. They’ve picked a population of “others” to blame for heinous — and completely made-up — crimes and then stoked mass fear and hysteria against these “others.” 

That is what it means to perpetuate a witch hunt. And if this can happen in Springfield, Ohio, it can happen in any U.S. town or city. What will happen if Trump and Vance are elected in November and begin their plan to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? Will people, city officials and nonprofit groups who defend their neighbors from being ripped from their homes, schools and worksites become the target of a widespread, coordinated witch hunt by the Trump administration? Will legal immigrants — like the majority of Springfield’s Haitian immigrant community — become the targets of these witch hunts fueled by online trolls and amplified by elected Republican officials? And will news reporters trying to find the truth about these future witch hunts be threatened like the journalists who work at the Haitian Times have been this month? 

We all have a choice to make. We can either sit back and ignore the stochastic terror being directed at immigrant communities throughout the U.S. and think, “It doesn’t affect me,” or we can decide enough is enough and refuse to support any political group, elected official, political candidate, business owner or media company helping to stoke these witch hunts.