Have You No Shame?
If you're a Republican presidential or vice presidential candidate, the answer is no.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
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Race To The Bottom
In the eight years since Donald Trump took over the Republican Party, there’s been one degradation after another from the Party of Lincoln (Mark Leibovich has written a good reminder of how far the GOP has fallen in the age of Trump). It didn’t seem possible that the GOP could wade even deeper into the political sewer … and then, at Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump repeated the oft-debunked conservative claim that Haitian immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio have been kidnapping and eating pets.
What came next was utterly predictable:
There is also this report from the Haitian Times about the increasingly precarious situation with the Haitian community in Springfield.
The morning after former President Donald Trump repeated racist claims about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, some Haitian families are keeping their children home from school for their safety, according to an area activist. Those who allowed their children did so, but with heavy hearts.
“She [my niece] was scared, but I told her to go, that God would protect,” said one Haitian resident, who asked that she not be identified publicly for fear of reprisal.
“We’re all victims this morning,” said the woman, who moved to Springfield six years ago. “They’re attacking us in every way.”
Aside from the anxiety caused by Tuesday night’s debate, the woman also said her cars have been vandalized twice in the middle of the night. She woke up one morning to broken windows and another to acid thrown on the vehicle. She has added cameras to her driveway and tried to report the incidents to the police to no avail.
“I’m going to have to move because this area is no longer good for me,” she said. “I can’t even leave my house to go to Walmart. I’m anxious and scared.”
The Haitian families’ accounts, shared with The Haitian Times under condition of confidentiality, are the latest tales of intimidation, bullying and assaults as anti-Haitian sentiment has gone viral.
One might hope that this deplorable turn of events would get Republicans to stop priming the pump on this xenophobic hate … but that would mean forgetting that the modern Republican Party is incapable of shame.
These Vance tweets were sent out this morning.
What is particularly disgusting about Vance’s missive above is the implication that “dropping 20,000 people into a small community” is the crux of the issue. I am confident that if 20,000 white people moved into Springfield, Vance would not be levying this charge. He is pretty clearly intimating that bringing thousands of immigrants of color into a white community is what created these social problems. It’s pure racism and xenophobia. Moreover, unlike Vance and Trump’s usual attacks on undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of the Haitian community in Springfield is in the country legally. So this isn’t just an attack on “illegal aliens,” it’s an attack on immigrants, writ large, and, in particular, immigrants of color.
The irony is that nothing happening in Springfield is accidental — this was a policy strategy put in place ten years ago.
Moreover, the influx of immigrants has been largely positive — though there have been challenges. On the one hand, rents have increased because of a lack of affordable housing, and enrollment in Medicaid, federal food assistance, and welfare programs has increased. On the flip side, there has been no increase in crime and wages have steadily risen.
Even the Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, speaks positively about the town's evolving demographics.
"These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs, and they filled a lot of jobs," DeWine told CBS News in an interview Wednesday. "And if you talk to employers, they've done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard."
For communities like Springfield that are losing population and seeing a brain drain of young professionals and entrepreneurs, immigration is often a new lease on life — and a way to strengthen a community by diversifying it. This is why immigration is often such a net positive for America.
Indeed, it was shocking to hear Vance go on CNBC earlier this week and say that if immigration were a path to prosperity, "America would be the most prosperous country in the world."
First of all, America IS one of the most prosperous countries in the world … and that prosperity is because of not despite immigration!
But Trump and Vance have no issues on which to run this election other than demonizing, targeting, and scapegoating immigrants — both documented and undocumented. So, they will continue to attack immigrant communities like the Haitian-American community in Ohio.
It’s beyond disgusting but it’s also, unfortunately, par for the course in MAGA world.
The State of the Race
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregator, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump 48 to 45.4 — slightly down from where things stood at the end of August.
Yet, I was struck by the recent poll results … all but one of which have Harris ahead (in the YouGov poll, she is tied).
Some of these polling companies are not so great, but Ipsos is a top-tier pollster, and they give Harris a 5-point lead. The big question for the Harris team is not whether it will get a boost from the debate … but whether it will last. (I suspect it will, though that’s a hunch).
Over at the Bulwark, Bill Kristol argues that Trump is losing the post-debate debate — and, unsurprisingly, I tend to agree. Trump’s announcement this week that he wouldn’t agree to a third presidential debate should give you a pretty good sense of how he and his team think he did. Skipping the third debate is understandable, considering how badly the last one went, but giving up Trump’s likely last opportunity to negatively define Harris is a huge missed opportunity,
I’m feeling slightly more confident in my piece from this week, arguing that while presidential debates usually don’t matter, this one might.
If you had right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer on your 2024 Bingo Card, congrats! Marc Caputo at the Bulwark looks at how Loomer is throwing a monkey wrench in Team MAGA’s plans.
Joe Biden has still got it.
Musical Interlude
An eagle-eyed reader wisely noted that my musical interlude in the post earlier this week about Harris’s destruction of Trump at the debate failed to include this song—a terrible oversight on my part.
I’m not loving the songs about shame, so here’s a random collection of songs I’ve been listening to recently.
Because I can’t get this movie out of my head …
The greatest guitar solo in the history of rock ‘n roll?
And if you haven’t listened to Radio Relics yet …. what the hell are you waiting for?
This spewing of racist lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio is the darkest, vilest aspect of any presidential campaign I can remember. And I am old, I can remember a lot of campaigns, including what W did to McCain in 2000 and the Willie Horton ugliness in the 1980s.
I'm really getting tired of the media trying to tamp down on the growing excitement about Harris with their "But will it last?" narrative. They did the same thing with Roe being overturned: "women are upset now but will they still next month," like being reduced to reproductive chattel whose own lives didn't matter was something women would just brush off. All I see in my circles is excitement growing. And it's really just another version of horse race coverage, the media's biggest failure, when they should be focusing on what the candidates are saying about what they want to do. Right now the authoritarian right is so close to their 40-year goal of destroying our human rights they are salivating and will do everything they can to break our democracy. And the media learned nothing from 2016 — nothing at all.