Donald Trump (rather infamously) never admits he's wrong. Even on things that are easy to disprove with incontrovertible evidence, Trump will still insist he is right. He will construct an alternate reality inside his own head where he is proven to be right and all those who disagree are proven to be in some giant conspiracy against him, and he will go right on insisting that up is down, or that night is actually day. He never backs down and certainly never apologizes -- no matter how much harm his lies may cause.

When the lie involved is something like: "I drew a new line on the map, so that's where the hurricane was going to head," then there aren't any actual victims (other than, perhaps, the government meteorological scientists who were pressured to lie about reality). But Trump and his new minion JD Vance are propagating a monstrous slur against a group of people that are now definitely at risk. And not only do they refuse to back down from their lie, they are creating new, worse lies and threatening to bring hordes of their followers into the hometown of the scapegoated minorities.

This should be seen as nothing short of reckless endangerment. If any violence erupts in Springfield, Ohio, it will have been the direct result of Trump and Vance spreading lies about the Haitian immigrants who now live there. We wrote earlier this week about how this constitutes "stochastic terrorism," but that was before Trump announced he'd hold a rally in Springfield within the next two weeks. Not content to let things die down, Trump is going to fan the flames and pour gasoline on the fire with absolutely no regard for any possible consequences that could happen as a direct result. Which is a pretty good definition of reckless endangerment.

Trump has always used xenophobia as a political weapon. And he's always ready to believe any conspiracy theory that floats around the swamp-fever that is rightwing social media. Which is what led to him accusing the immigrants of "eating the dogs... eating the cats" during his disastrous debate performance. Vance, ever the lickspittle, has been going even further ever since. It has all morphed into a very frightening thing, all because Trump is incapable of saying: "Oh, I was wrong about that? There's no evidence of it? Well, I'm sorry I said differently, I had heard that it was true."

The town itself -- even before Trump threatened to hold a rally there -- is under siege. Bomb threats have been rolling in by the dozens -- to places such as elementary schools. The Proud Boys have marched through the streets of Springfield already. And if you think "reckless endangerment" is too strong a term to use, consider what Trump said when he was asked to denounce bomb threats against schools: "I don't know what happened with the bomb threats. I know that it's [Springfield] been taken over by illegal immigrants, and that's a terrible thing that happened." In other words, a brand-new lie (Springfield has not been "taken over" by Haitian immigrants, who are actually here legally), while refusing to condemn actual bomb threats.

The town's mayor and the governor of Ohio -- both Republicans -- have denounced the lies being spewed about Springfield's residents. They have both warned of the dangers of spreading such lies. They are both begging for the lies to stop. But neither one of them is brave enough to denounce and completely disavow the two men spreading those lies to the nation, so it's hard to hold them up as any sort of profiles in political courage.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times today, but it was pretty mealy-mouthed. It begins with a strong statement of support for the Haitian immigrants in Springfield:

But the city hit tough times in the 1980s and 1990s, falling into serious economic decline as manufacturing, rail commerce and good-paying jobs dwindled. Now, however, Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs.

They are there legally. They are there to work.

It is disappointing to me that Springfield has become the epicenter of vitriol over America's immigration policy, because it has long been a community of great diversity.

It's "disappointing" to him, but later on in the piece he pulls his punches in a notable way:

As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.

Got that? He is now "saddened" by all of this, but is still going to vote for Trump and Vance anyway. He refuses to stand up for his convictions and denounce Trump in any real tangible way (such as: "If Trump and Vance continue to spout these lies, I cannot in good conscience vote for them or ask other Ohioans to vote for them either," for instance).

In a press conference, DeWine tried to explain his spinelessness and party-before-all-else stance:

DeWine repeated comments from earlier this week when he said as governor, he would always welcome a visit from a presidential candidate. He added that he will support the Republican candidates for president, and that if you want to have impact politically, "you need to be inside one political party or the other."

In response to a question about whether he is hopeful that Trump will stop making baseless claims about Springfield, DeWine said "Well, I hope he does."

Asked why he hadn't reached out directly to Trump and told him to stop, DeWine said, because "I didn't think it would do any good."

Pathetic. OK, to be fair, he is probably right -- knowing Trump, it probably wouldn't do any good. But at least DeWine would then have known he had tried to do the right thing. Instead, he's going to vote for Trump anyway, no matter what foul lies continue to come out of his mouth.

Vance, meanwhile, keeps making things worse. Last weekend, in an interview with Dana Bash, Vance admitted he's just flat-out making this stuff up: "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast."

He later tried to clarify, without much success: "I say that we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it."

His team made a ridiculous attempt to provide some proof of the lie, but it was easily debunked:

"A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors," the report from Kris Maher, Valerie Bauerlein and Tawnell D. Hobbs read. "But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore's house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later -- found safe in her own basement."

Kilgore told the reporters that she'd apologized to her neighbors for the allegation.

Vance then trotted out a new-and-improved demonization of the completely blameless immigrants -- that they were causing a spike in communicable diseases such as H.I.V. and tuberculosis. This vicious lie is also not true. It is obviously designed to stoke further hatred against the Haitians, with reckless disregard for any possible consequences.

Vance then doubled down on a different part of all the lies, that the Haitians are (as he and Trump have been calling them) "illegal immigrants."

"The media loves to say that the Haitian migrants... are here legally," he said. "What they mean is that [Vice President] Kamala Harris used two separate programs -- mass parole and temporary protective status -- she used two programs to wave a wand and to say, 'We're not going to deport those people here.' "

"Well," he continued, "if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I'm still going to call them an illegal alien. An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works."

Yet another lie, since Kamala Harris had precisely zero to do with the Haitians' legal status. Trump and Vance are threatening not just to deport all the Haitians in Springfield, but now they're promising they will be the first ones deported under their planned mass deportation of millions of people. Even though they are legal immigrants, mind you.

This is reprehensible. It is dangerous. It should frighten any American who cares about basic humanity. This is how pogroms get started. And speaking of pogroms, Trump just told a group of Jewish supporters that he would be blaming the Jews if he doesn't win the election. A little antisemitism on top of all the racism Trump and Vance have been spouting ever since the debate, just for flavor.

This is all, mind you, happening after a would-be assassin was caught lying in wait for Trump at his favorite Florida golf club last weekend. Trump and other Republicans then started whining about the rhetoric being used by Democrats, while still demonizing the Haitians in Ohio.

According to Trump, only he should be allowed to use demonizing rhetoric against his political opponents. It is absolutely beyond the pale when Democrats do it to him, but even in the same sentence as his complaint, he still thinks it is fine for him to do to them: "Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country -- both from the inside and out." One Washington Post columnist summed this up rather nicely: "Trump's political appeals have never been particularly subtle, and this one isn't either. It's dangerous for Democrats to say these things about him, he insists -- as he says those things about Democrats."

This also spiralled quickly out of control. Elon Musk posted on his social media platform: "no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala." He later shrugged it off as "a joke." The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire went even further, posting: "Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero."

Speaking of the difference between night and day, over on the other side of the presidential race, Kamala Harris sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an online event (a kind of throwback to her wildly-popular television show) that was seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers. The event was called "Unite For America," and brought together over 100 online groups supporting Harris (including: "White Dudes for Harris, Cat Ladies for Kamala and Latinas for Harris"). Celebrity guests made appearances (Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, Jennifer Lopez, Meryl Streep, etc.) who all pronounced their support for Harris.

During the event and even more pointedly in a rally in Georgia today, Harris leaned in to a recent story from ProPublica that told the tragedy of a Georgia woman who should still be alive today but who instead was killed by her state's abortion ban (she was forced to wait 20 hours for medical care, when immediate intervention would easily have saved her life). At today's even, Harris put it in a familiar framing, saying: "We will speak her name: Amber Nicole Thompson." This should become a regular refrain for her speeches, one assumes.

Let's see, what else? The Teamsters announced that they would not be making a presidential endorsement this year, but a whole bunch of local Teamster groups jumped into the void and immediately endorsed Kamala Harris. So far, local branches of the Union who represent over one million Teamsters have endorsed Harris.

And finally, CNN got the scoop of the week for uncovering the online history of the Republican candidate for North Carolina governor. On a porn site (that apparently had message boards, for some unfathomable reason), Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson apparently had all kinds of odious things to say -- including that he was a "black NAZI!" and that he supported slavery. No, really. Here's what he had to say about it: "Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few." And those are only the worst things he had to say -- CNN had plenty of other examples which were equally as bad.

We wrote about this whole sordid mess yesterday, so we'll just mention it in passing here, but it's yet another example of a hotheaded MAGA type who enters politics without the Republican Party lifting a finger to vet them. The CNN revelations certainly aren't the only eyebrow-raising things Robinson has said over the years -- mostly to the delight of conservative audiences. Trump, of course, endorsed Robinson in his run for the governor's office -- but (rather tellingly) will not invite Robinson on stage this weekend as Trump holds another rally in the state. Trump has a real talent for picking Republican candidates who spectacularly fail to win what should be easily-winnable races for the GOP, and this is merely the most recent example. But this time (fingers crossed) perhaps it will impact his own chances for victory, since North Carolina could be the state that decides the entire presidential election. And wouldn't that be poetic justice, if Trump loses the state because of his own endorsement of an obviously-unfit Republican?

 

We're going to hand the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

This week, Schumer brought up -- again -- a bill written by Democrats which would guarantee access to in-vitro fertilization treatments everywhere in America, but would also have forced insurance companies to cover the procedure (which can cost tens of thousands of dollars). Every Democrat voted for it. Every Republican except Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted against it. JD Vance didn't even bother to show up for the vote, but the first time the bill came up he voted against it.

What's especially poignant about this situation is that even Donald Trump has called for insurance companies to pay for I.V.F. treatments and for women everywhere to be guaranteed access (regardless of state law). But even that wasn't enough for virtually all the Senate Republicans -- they still voted against it.

Here's what Schumer had to say about it:

Three months ago, nearly every Senate Republican voted against protecting I.V.F. in this chamber. It was astounding to watch them with a straight face... claim that of course they cared about supporting families, of course they supported I.V.F. Just not enough to actually vote to protect it.

Every Democratic candidate in every Senate race there is this election cycle should immediately cut an ad pointing this out to the voters in their state. Because that is precisely why Schumer brought the bill up for a vote again -- to highlight the issue and make some political hay over it.

Schumer is also moving forward and creating a Senate bill to avoid a government shutdown at the end of this month, since the House is doing nothing but dithering about the issue (as usual).

For showcasing the difference between a Democratic Party who is able to govern and is busily working to make people's lives better and a Republican Party who is completely feckless and ineffective, Chuck Schumer is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

We're just going to go generic and award the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

The Adams administration is collapsing under the weight of multiple scandals right now. There are so many of them it is hard to keep track of them all, in fact. Axios has a pretty good rundown of them all, for anyone interested in a list. As they point out:

At least four agencies -- the Justice Department, the FBI, the IRS and the city's Department of Investigations -- are now involved in four separate corruption probes of people in [Mayor Eric] Adams' orbit.

More investigations come to light on a regular basis, and people have been resigning left and right. So far, Adams himself hasn't been a direct target, but the overwhelming amount of corruption from his team reflects rather badly on his own leadership.

So just in a generic way, for hiring all these people and then utterly failing to keep them on the straight and narrow, we have to award New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week -- while wondering what the drip, drip, drip of corruption investigations is going to reveal next week. That's how bad things have gotten, folks.

[Contact New York City Mayor Eric Adams on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]

 

Volume 767 (9/20/24)

Another mixed bag this week, as the campaign season enters the final 50 days. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly!

 

   Trump abortion bans

Kamala Harris has been using this regularly, and all other Democrats should follow her lead.

"We wouldn't be where we are now without Donald Trump. Which is why every single law in every single state that denies women full body autonomy and the freedom to make their own medical choices with their doctors is nothing short of a Trump abortion ban. He wants to disassociate himself with the consequences of his actions, but we're not going to let him get away with it. Every woman that dies as a result, every woman who is told to just keep bleeding until she nears death before she gets proper medical care -- they can all blame the Trump abortion bans for such inhumane treatment. Let's lay the blame where it belongs."

 

   Amber Nicole Thurman

Trump and the Republicans use this political tactic to highlight people killed by immigrants. It is high time Democrats start using it against the Trump abortion bans as well.

"Say her name: Amber Nicole Thurman. She died because doctors wouldn't treat her and let her suffer for 20 hours before they even attempted to give her the medical care that would have saved her life. How can this be happening in the United States of America in the twenty-first century? She's not the only one, either -- this is happening in state after state after state. So whenever Republicans try to defend the Trump abortion bans they support, answer them back by saying her name: Amber Nicole Thurman died because of these inhumane bans."

 

   Reckless endangerment

Again, call it what it really is.

"There's a community in Ohio that is being absolutely terrorized right now -- complete with bomb threats at elementary schools -- because of the fearmongering and hateful demonizing spewing from the lips of Donald Trump and JD Vance. They both know that what they say are lies. They both know what their hate-filled rhetoric could cause, and yet they keep right on lying with no regard for what any of their followers might be spurred into doing. There's a legal term for this sort of thing -- reckless endangerment. Trump and Vance are recklessly endangering a whole community of people who have done nothing wrong and they simply don't care what happens to them. This is disgraceful and it is dangerous and any politician who hasn't denounced them for doing so is equally complicit in whatever happens next. I don't want to hear any of them trying to claim afterwards: "Well, I had nothing to do with that" -- because they all did. Every one of them."

 

   Legal or not, Trump hates immigrants

They're not even trying to hide it anymore.

"Donald Trump and JD Vance are now saying the quiet part out loud. They don't care what an immigrant's status is, they're going to try to deport even legal immigrants. They're planning on revoking people's citizenship retroactively and then just kicking them out of the country. Republicans used to give lip service to supporting legal immigrants, saying they only disapproved of those here illegally, but this puts the lie to that. They want to kick out whomever they deem undesirable, whether they're here legally or not."

 

   Look in the mirror, Donny

Don't let the media grant him a double standard!

"After another apparent assassination attempt, every Democrat immediately denounced the would-be shooter and condemned all forms of political violence. After Nancy Pelosi's husband survived an assassination attempt a while back, Trump and plenty of Republicans joked about it. They spread conspiracy theories and made fun of it all. Now Donald Trump is accusing Democrats of using dangerous rhetoric about him while in the same sentence he does the same thing about Democrats. This is on top of his efforts to terrorize a town in Ohio with the most dangerous rhetoric imaginable. So if Donald Trump wants to identify the worst purveyor of dangerous political rhetoric in America right now, he should really look in a mirror."

 

   Republicans don't support I.V.F.

Hammer this one home.

"Republicans sure do love to publicly express their support for women getting in-vitro fertilization treatments, but when it comes time to actually support it politically, they are nowhere to be found. Even Donald Trump has called for I.V.F. treatments to be covered by insurance companies, but when a bill that would do precisely that was brought up this week in the Senate, it didn't pass because only two Republicans (both women) voted for it. Every other Republican voted against guaranteeing I.V.F. access for every woman in this country. So don't believe their campaign promise of support, because it's all just cynical lip service. Republicans do not support I.V.F. when it matters. Democrats do."

 

   What could possibly go wrong?

This takes the prize for "scandal of the week," obviously.

"Let's see... so the Republican Party decided it would be a good idea to nominate a candidate for governor in North Carolina who is not only a proud 'black NAZI!' (his term), but is also pro-slavery and anti-M.L.K. Jr. I mean, really... what could possibly go wrong with that brilliant plan?"

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground