Inside Trump's new front in the Haitian hysteria push: Charleroi

During a campaign rally in Tucson, Ariz., earlier this month — his first since debating Vice President Kamala Harris — former President Donald Trump doubled down on his false claims that Haitians are stealing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.Then, he tossed another small Rust Belt community into the national spotlight.“Likewise, a small 4,000-person town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania,” Trump said. “Have you ever heard of it? Charleroi. What a beautiful name. But it’s not beautiful now. It’s experienced a 2,000 percent increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris.“So, Pennsylvania: Remember this when you have to go to vote,” Trump added.The sudden burst of attention by Trump and his allies on the borough of Charleroi in Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley is yet more evidence that the campaign is leaning into racial scapegoating as an electoral strategy to win critical swing states, even as critics warn the rhetoric could spill into vigilante violence.ALSO READ: Let's call Springfield what it is: Republican-made terrorismTrump and his MAGA allies' focus on Charleroi appears to have begun on Sept. 11, when a shadowy nonprofit linked to a former speechwriter for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign posted an interview with a pro-Trump member of the Charleroi borough council.The language in the X post by the nonprofit America 2100 is markedly similar to what Trump would say at his campaign rally the following day.“It isn’t just Springfield; it’s happening everywhere,” the post reads. “In Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a low-income town of just 4,000 — the immigrant population has increased by 2,000% over the past two years. It’s almost all Haitians.”The America 2100 post was boosted when Donald Trump Jr. re-posted it only 10 minutes later.Nate Hochman, a senior adviser to America 2100 and the only person publicly identified with the nonprofit, was fired from the DeSantis campaign in June 2023 after reportedly making a video featuring the Sonnenrad — a symbol also known as the Black Sun that is associated with Nazis — and tweeting it from a pro-DeSantis account.Previously, Hochman had praised Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has denied the Holocaust and made numerous antisemitic statements. Hochman said on a December 2021 Twitter Space chat that Fuentes had “gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect that for sure.” He added: “But the fact that you’ve said super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can accomplish in politics.”Hochman, a former intern at the Claremont Institute’s American Mind magazine and now a contributor at the American Spectator, announced on X on Monday that he was making a road trip to Charleroi “to report on the Haitian immigration crisis.”Over the course of the week, Hochman posted video after video on the America 2100 X account, featuring interviews with local white residents who were unhappy about their new Haitian neighbors.In one interview, a white man identified as “Tom” complains that the Haitians “have no interest in our culture” and that they open their own groceries “at the main drag of town.” The X post identifies Tom as “a lifelong native,” although the video shows Tom saying he moved to Charleroi in 2017.In a video posted on Thursday, a man identified as “Ernie” laments that Charleroi “used to be a nice, middle-of-nowhere blue-collar town.”“I think they’ve just destroyed the town, and they’ve bought all these properties,” Ernie says. “Okay, you might be able to buy a house cheap, but what kind of people are you gonna get in?”“Yeah, what kind of neighbors you have?” Hochman says.“Well, that’s it,” Ernie says. “And right now I’m surrounded by the immigrants.”Some of the America 2100 X posts echo Great Replacement, a white supremacist conspiracy theory that, taken to an extreme, falsely claims that white people face genocide because of demographic changes.“One thing that can’t be overstated is the degree to which mass migration wreaks havoc on the social cohesion of the already-existing community,” reads one post from a Sept. 7 thread about Springfield. “Local landlords, for example, have been making a killing. But they’re replacing their fellow citizens — and locals hate them for it.”The post includes screengrabs from the “Haitian Community in Springfield, Ohio” Facebook page. One commenter replies to a post by a local realtor offering her services to the immigrant community by writing, “Wouldn’t plan on staying too long.”Another X post by the America 2100 account refers to immigrants as “invaders,” using verbiage that turned up in the manifesto of 21-year-old white supremacists who massacred 23 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in August 2019.Hochman could not be reached for comment for this story.NOW READ: Notorious conspiracy theorist rolled out by RNC to train election overseers in MichiganTrump himself has repeatedly used the term, including during his recent campaign rally in Tucson.“Under Kamala Harris, our country is under a thing called invasion,” he said. “Did you ever hear the word invasion? Just like a military. It’s like a military invasion. We’re being conquered and we’re being occupied by a foreign element.” Swing state strategy of attacking immigrantsWhile the racist rhetoric against Haitian immigrants in Springfield focused on false claims that they are stealing and eating people’s pet, the attacks in Charleroi have zeroed in on another object of fear in white grievance politics: jobs.An X post by the Libs of TikTok account run by Chaya Raichik, one of more than a dozen social-media influencers enlisted by the Trump campaign for a “war room” that amplified his attacks on Harris during the recent debate, shared a video on Tuesday that featured a man ruefully describing an arrangement to transport Haitian immigrants by bus to and from a processed food packaging plant in Charleroi.“Incredible footage revealing an operation in Charleroi, PA where Haitians are being bussed to and from food factories operated by Fourth Street Foods,” the post reads. “Kamala imported 2,000 Haitians into this town of 4,000 people, and now they’re taking American jobs.”State Sen. Camera Bartolotta, a Republican who represents Charleroi, said in a reply that she had re-posted from the Libs of TikTok account in the past, but the post about her constituents was not true.“There was no workforce in Charleroi a few years ago when a business owner desperately needed them,” Bartolotta told Raichik. “He advertised and looked for workers for a long time. Before shutting down completely, he hired an agency that connected immigrants who were vetted and legal to work in his facility.”David Barbe, the CEO of Fourth Street Foods, confirmed to KDKA News of Pittsburgh on Wednesday that his immigrant employees haven’t displaced any native-born workers.“If I had 300 Americans come in today and they wanted to work, we would make room for them,” Barbe told investigative journalist Andy Sheehan.Contrasting with the claims by the locals interviewed by Hochman suggesting that the Haitian immigrants are bankrupting Charleroi, Borough Manager Joe Manning told Sheehan that the new arrivals have made a net positive contribution to the area economy.“They come here, they buy property,” Manning said. “They open businesses. They work here. They pay taxes. So, for us, at the end of the day, it has been a benefit.”Some of Trump’s supporters believe that his false claims about Haitian immigrants, far from alienating voters, will instead give him the edge in critical swing states.Jeremy Carl, a former deputy assistant secretary of the interior and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, praised Trump for bringing up “the cats” during the debate.“You know, that’s just going to be a winning issue for us because it really is the linchpin of kind of every other crazy thing the left has done particularly on immigration,” Carl said during a podcast appearance on Monday.Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who previously served as mayor of Braddock — a borough only 30 miles away from Charleroi — predicted to Raw Story that Pennsylvania voters will ultimately reject Trump’s electoral strategy of demonizing immigrants.“Blame the immigrants, whether it’s that my dog’s gone — blame the immigrant,” Fetterman said. “That’s very anti-immigration. And now they’re proud of that. They’re not even trying to veil that. And western Pennsylvania has a really long history of immigration, and sometimes people blaming all of the ills on immigrants too. And I strongly reject that. And western Pennsylvania I think will as well, too.”‘A total explosion of media’: Enter CSPOAThe Trump campaign did not respond to a question from Raw Story about how the candidate became aware of the Haitian immigrant community in Charleroi.However, during an interview with the Liberty RoundTable podcast, Borough Councilman Larry Celaschi alluded to the America 100 X post published on the eve of Trump’s rally in Tucson.“I know I did an interview with another news source out there that happened to go viral, and the next thing you know we’re hearing the same language that they had as their headlines was released from President Trump’s own mouth at his rally,” Celaschi said. “Since that time, it’s just been a total explosion of media here in the borough of Charleroi. It’s just overwhelming. I didn’t know that there were that many media sources out there.”The two men who interviewed Celaschi, along with Borough Mayor Gregg Doerfler, are themselves representative of the far-right media personalities who have gravitated to the drama that Trump generated surrounding Charleroi.Sam Bushman, the podcast host, is the CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, or CSPOA, an organization that promotes the controversial idea that sheriffs are the highest law in the land and are not legally bound to uphold state and federal laws that they unilaterally deem to be unconstitutional.As documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bushman has a long history of promoting racist ideas and providing a forum for hardcore white nationalists. In July 2023, he interviewed a member of the white supremacist group Identity Dixie. In a Facebook post, the pseudonymous guest known as “Padraig Martin” advised those who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that the next time they should be “prepared to kill them all.” He urged: “Do not leave a single police officer, congressman, judge or any other functionary.”The other host who interviewed the Charleroi borough mayor and councilman on Tuesday was Richard Mack, the founder of CSPOA and current president of its advisory board.Ignoring the fact that the Haitians living and working in Charleroi are there under temporary protected status, Mack suggested that an unspecified group of “supposed leaders” should be investigated for “aiding and abetting illegal immigration.” He added, “It might rise to the level of treason.”Bushman and Mack prodded Doerfler and Celaschi to tell them about crime committed by Haitians.Pressed for specific examples, Doerfler said, “The people, they’re just afraid to walk the streets, or whatever. I’ve heard a lot of that.”Doerfler did not return a phone message left by Raw Story.Celaschi told Bushman and Mack about a business owner who ran into her establishment and dialed 911 after a Haitian immigrant allegedly pursued her, demanding money he believed she owed him.“To me, your police chief, if there’s illegals in your community, need to take action on the illegal activity, doesn’t he?” Bushman said. “I mean, I’m not here to try to divide your community, but I’m saying, look, if you got illegal people committing illegal acts, are they in jail, or they just allowed to run around free? Where’s your law enforcement locally?”Doerfler and Celaschi confirmed that the police do arrest people in Charleroi, including Haitians, who break the law.“The racist intervention of far-right groups like CSPOA in places like Charleroi makes the entire community significantly less safe and makes it more challenging to deal with real issues facing rural America,” Devin Burgart, who monitors the far right as director of the Seattle-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, told Raw Story. “This type of rhetoric puts the Haitian community and Black residents of Charleroi in grave danger, as the bomb threats and violent racist rhetoric leveled at Springfield proved.”Echoing Trump’s false charge in Tucson last week that “not only is Comrade Kamala allowing illegal immigrants to stampede across our border, but she’s flying them here from other countries,” Bushman asked the two borough leaders if they believe the federal government is complicit in a crime.“Did the federal government and your state government in some way literally aid and abet illegal activity in America?” Bushman asked.“Yes, they did aid and abet,” Celaschi responded. “Absolutely. I will stand by your statement 1,000 percent.”Bushman was exultant.“And they’re literally saying the federal government has partnered in promoting illegal activity, all the way down to their city,” he said, “to the point of literal virtual mayhem where citizens are in fear in their community.”ALSO READ: Something broke Trump’s brain