Where once Donald Trump attracted only the right-wing fringe of American politics, now he leads it. Where once he kept some distance from agitators and provocateurs like Laura Loomer, now they're at the center of his campaign. And where once he merely inspired extremists to act, now he points them directly at the objects of his rage.
Take Springfield, Ohio, where schools, colleges and municipal buildings have been shut down and community events canceled owing to bomb threats targeting the city's Haitian community. Those threats come as Trump — and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio — smear the Haitians of Springfield with the lie that they're stealing and eating the pets of presumably native-born Americans.
Vance, who was ostensibly elected to represent and aid the people of towns like Springfield, has been even more vicious than his boss, spreading the additional lie that Haitians have carried disease and disorder to Ohio. Despite pleas from both the Republican mayor of Springfield and the Republican governor of Ohio, who called the story of the attacks on pets "a piece of garbage that was simply not true," neither Trump nor Vance is willing to end the rhetorical assault on the city's Haitian immigrants. If anything, they're unapologetic.
During a rally in Tucson, Arizona, on Thursday, for example, Trump expanded the lie even further. "Twenty thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended on a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life," Trump said. "Re.