Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Haitian immigrants are in the country legally and they don’t eat cats. However, on Monday, Ohio Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, falsely claimed the opposite. “Months ago, I raised the issue of illegal Haitian immigrants draining welfare and generally causing chaos throughout Springfield, Ohio,” he posted on X. “People have reportedly had their pets kidnapped and eaten by people who don’t belong in this country. Where is our border czar?” Other conservatives were quick to repeat Vance’s lie.
Here is Senator Ted Cruz from Texas:
The X-Account of Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee joined in, pointing to the cat lie and another baseless rumor that a Haitian immigrant killed a duck in a park in Springfield, Ohio:
Representative Mike Collins from Georgia did not want to shy away from this:
And Elon Musk, the right-wing billionaire who owns X, has repeatedly tweeted this lie.
Vance and his allies lie about Haitian immigrants because they don’t care about the truth – and because racism is the glue that holds their coalition together. Racism is their connection to their party and to Trump, the leader of that party.
Monday’s racist attacks did not come out of the blue, for bigotry is not a new feature of the Republican Party. It has been simmering for many decades, sometimes disguised behind the party’s “law and order” message. Who is breaking the law and who is threatening the order of things? Republicans point the finger at new immigrants and black Americans, ad nauseam. As a strategy, it was never particularly subtle, but it was successful, winning the party white voters from the South in the wake of the civil rights movement. In 2015, Trump entered the presidential race just behind the Tea Party, whose members widely – and falsely – believed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and left white America to campaign for black Americans and liberals. Republican history leads us inexorably to Trump, who exploited the party’s racism to win the presidential election months later.
Trump’s racism is blatant and widespread; it goes back decades. After a jury wrongfully convicted five black and Latino teenagers of a notorious 1989 Central Park rape, he took out newspaper ads calling on New York to adopt the death penalty. The five men have since been vindicated, but Trump refused to apologize for the ads. He was a prominent supporter of the birther movement and spread the lie that Obama was not born in the United States. As a candidate and as president, he has cast immigrants in particular as a serious threat to American security—a claim that delights his base and his allies in elected office alike. When he announced his presidential run in 2015, he declared, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re sending people who have a lot of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I suppose, are good people.” He later warned in a 2016 debate about “bad men” coming across the border. As president, he surrounded himself with anti-immigrant racists like Stephen Miller, who co-wrote Trump’s blood-and-soil speeches and became the architect of family separation during the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump referred to Haiti and several other countries as “shithole countries.”
The former president’s racism has not faded over time. In fact, it remains key to his appeal, thanks in part to Trump surrogates who hope to portray his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as weak on the southern border. Although President Joe Biden never named Harris a “border czar,” as Vance suggested on Monday, Republicans still hope to link her to the issue. Vance has been particularly vocal on the subject of Springfield’s Haitian residents, saying in a July speech at the National Conservatism Conference that they had “overwhelmed” the city. The truth is more complex than Vance, a Trump critic turned sycophant, would have voters believe. A report in the New York Just not only the stress, but also the revitalization. “They come to work every day. They don’t make a drama. They are punctual,” a local employer told the newspaper.
Anyone who votes Republican today supports Trump, and anyone who supports Trump agrees with his racism. Vance knows this well. He has long since abandoned any semblance of integrity in the pursuit of power, and is willing to slander the Haitian residents of Springfield to add fuel to the fire on his boss’s behalf. Cruz is an even more pathetic figure, another Trump critic turned useless surrogate. (He has less sycophancy to his name than Vance, who may one day be able to say that Trump made him vice president.) Collins, of Georgia, once called for an immigrant to be thrown out of a helicopter. (“Come for the memes, stay for the politics,” his bio on X reads.) Musk, a prominent Trump supporter, has long accused Democrats of “importing voters,” among other false immigration claims. (Musk is himself an immigrant.)
Vance’s cat-eating comments are wrong and he knows it. His comments could even put Haitian immigrants in danger, all in a desperate attempt to score political points. In another sense, though, he did us a favor. Now it’s much harder to ignore the rot at the heart of the GOP. We’re overdue for a more honest conversation about our political opponents — and about what it means to capitulate to the right on immigration policy.
