Let Trump’s Latest Vile Racist Lie Destroy His Presidential Dreams

We’re now several weeks into the sprawling, fake story about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH. I don’t want to get into the specificity of the lies. All of that has been well-covered. Instead, I want to talk about how profoundly anti-American the Trump/Vance ticket has now become.

By turning their backs on their neighbors who have done nothing wrong, Trump and Vance have also turned their backs on the American experiment. They do so for purely selfish reasons. They do so to provoke fear, outrage, and, potentially, violence. The lies about Haiti, or “Hatia,” as JD Vance calls it, are only the latest example of the decade-long, hate-filled fever dream to which the charlatan known as Trump has cruelly subjected this country.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, Trump said immigrants are “changing the character of our small towns and villages all over the country…they will never be the same. Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think so. The fact is, we have to get ‘em the hell out.” Rousing applause.

We have to get ‘em the hell out.

People who have done nothing wrong. People who have come to this country to make a better life for themselves. People escaping poverty, unrest, abuse. People who have committed no offense greater than having a higher proportion of melanin in their skin.

This specific lie isn’t about so-called “illegal immigrants.” This is about people legally residing in a community in Ohio doing good work serving their families and their community. These are people who have done everything they were supposed to do, and still find themselves subject to the unearned hatred of one of our two presidential nominees and, maybe even worse, by the senator from Ohio who is supposed to represent them.

So, why do we have to get ‘em the hell out?

The answer is simple. It’s obvious. And it’s disgusting. Because they’re Black. I’m not interested in hearing any of the MAGA bullshit about “straining social services,” or “rising housing costs.”

No.

Because that wasn’t the claim made by JD Vance and Donald Trump when they began hyping this bullshit. It had to do with demonizing and other-izing people who have already suffered enough that they chose to leave the nation of their birth. They did so exactly the way the MAGA people who claim to have “no problem with legal immigration” said they should. They went through the system. They got their paperwork. And their reward is bomb threats. Because, I’ll say it again, they’re Black.

F**k you, MAGA.

Tom Brenner/Reuters

The lies are provable. The racism is demonstrable. The hatred is palpable. And yet, there’s virtual silence from the American public about this point because we’ve all grown so numb to the poisonous rhetoric now institutionalized by the Republican Party that we don’t bat an eye when Donald Trump promises to go door-to-door to round up millions of people and put them in camps. We tried that once before. It was one of the most egregious American sins of the 20^th century.

We’ve had to endure this pucker-mouthed loser telling us, repeatedly, for the better part of a decade that immigrants are raping and killing Americans, with the caveat that some – some – are good people. Nobody disputes that immigrants sometimes do commit horrible crimes. But they do so in far lower numbers than their American compatriots.

I’m so sick of the immigrant bashing and the Jew bashing and the LGBTQ bashing and the insults and the lies and the slander and the bullying. So sick of this grotesquerie of a man preening through a life of malfeasance while lecturing the rest of us on what makes America great.

I can tell you what makes American great.

Towards the end of the 19^th century, the Tsar passed a series of “temporary” laws called “The May Laws,” which forbid Jews from owning homes, living where they wanted, conducting business, etc. etc.

My grandfather’s parents uprooted everything they knew to cross an ocean. They arrived on Ellis Island without knowing English, without any money. They made their way west to Chicago, where they settled on the South Side, and built a livelihood selling fruits and vegetables. A couple generations later, their descendants have spread out across the nation repaying many, many times over what the nation gave to them.

That’s the story of America.

That’s what makes this country great. Since its founding, we’ve accepted foreigners onto our soil and given them a shot. Think about how remarkable it is for a nation to welcome “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The fact that this same country which once enslaved Black people also unshackled millions of others from destitution and persecution. America is great because it gives refuge to the weak.

And then what happens? Eventually, the weak grow strong. They settle into their new home, they support their families, they get jobs, they open businesses. Like my family, they eventually have children and grandchildren who grow up to shoulder the burden of caring for and maintaining this great country, which once gave them an opportunity. Kamala Harris. Barack Obama. Nikki Haley. Marco Rubio. Millions and millions of others who live ordinary lives caring for the shining city on a hill.

I no longer have any patience for this nasty bullshit. For weeks now, a small Ohio city has been subjected to vitriol based on lies. Disgusting lies. Racist lies. Nobody’s eating f***ing cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Nobody’s stealing birds from the park and barbecuing them.

Real Americans stand up against bigotry. Real Americans care about the least among us, not only because we are empathetic humans, but because a generation or two back, most of our families were in exactly the same position. Donald Trump is not a real American. He’s not even a good American. He is the worst of us enraptured, like Narcissus, with his own mirage. Nobody’s eating pets but I have some small hope that this racist lie will be the things that, ironically, cooks Trump’s goose.