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Donald Trump's, JD Vance's and Marc Molinaro's Demonization of Haitian Immigrants

Submitted by Robin Messing on Fri, 09/27/2024 - 3:18pm

My Congressman, Marc Molinaro, has made the demonization of undocumented immigrants one of his main focuses in his battle to win re-election against his Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, in New York's 19th Congressional District. This has become standard fare for the Republican Party.

There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country. You are bound to have some extremely violent criminals in any population of that size. Whenever an undocumented immigrant is responsible for a particularly heinous rape or murder, you can count on Republicans to scream, “LOOK AT THAT. THESE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE HORRIBLE, AND IF IT WEREN’T FOR OUR DEMOCRATIC OPPONENTS, THEIR VICTIMS WOULD STILL BE ALIVE.”

This group demonization is particularly unwarranted since immigrants do not commit violent crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans. In fact, a Cato Institute study of homicides in Texas found that “illegal immigrants were 26 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide.” This makes intuitive sense because undocumented immigrants WANT to keep a low profile. They try not to attract the attention of the police because they know that they are likely to be deported if they are caught committing crimes.


Marc Molinaro has gone far beyond the normal Republican attacks against undocumented immigrants in his attempts to smear Josh Riley. Molinaro retweeted an image of a Facebook post claiming that Haitian immigrants were butchering and eating dogs and cats as well as ducks and geese in Springfield Ohio. A second image attached to Molinaro's tweet shows a Black man walking down the street carrying two geese.


Dozens of angry people responded to Molinaro’s tweet within hours telling him that this was a lie. Molinaro did not listen to them. 


Josh Riley also called out Molinaro and demanded an apology for posting this debunked racist conspiracy theory.
 

 

Molinaro did not delete his tweet or apologize for inciting hatred towards Haitian immigrants. Instead, he doubled down by quoting Riley’s tweet and demanding an apology from him:
 

 

Dozens of angry people, including myself, again demanded Molinaro retract his statement. Some of us even posted links to articles about the Springfield police who debunked the rumor by stating they had not received any reports of pets being stolen or eaten.

 

Notice that Molinaro posted his two tweets on September 9, the day before Donald Trump spewed this garbage in his debate with Kamala Harris. Molinaro has still not deleted his tweets or apologized as of September 27 as I write this.

We now have further confirmation that the story about Haitians eating pets is bogus. The story originated from a September 5 by post Erika Lee to a private Facebook group. Lee, who describes herself as a Democrat for Trump, got her "information" from her neighbor, Kimberly Newton. NewsGuardRealityCheck.com reports that the post was based on third degree hearsay and that Newton admitted,


I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.

Lee deleted her Facebook post and apologized saying, “I misinterpreted a neighbor story. I messed up royally. I never meant to cause so much hate.”

Lee expressed her regrets that her post went public and that her post had been used to smear Haitians. She told NBC News,

I feel for the Haitian community. If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.


And if that is not enough evidence that the claim pushed by Trump and Molinaro isn't 100% Grade A horse manure, Ohio’s REPUBLICAN Governor Mike DeWine said, “This is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.” 

 

He also said that the Haitians in Springfield are there legally.

 

So we've debunked the snapshot of Facebook that Molinaro attached to his first tweet to demonize Haitians. But what about the picture of the alleged Haitian carrying two geese? TMZ got in touch with the Ohio Division of Wildlife, and this is what they learned.

. . . the guy was actually picking up 2 geese that were hit in a Columbus car accident. And by the way, that's 45 minutes from Springfield, where Trump's wild claims supposedly took place.

 

The wildlife org clarified to us you usually need a statement or receipt from the county sheriff or wildlife officer to claim an animal carcass. But the Franklin County Wildlife Office tells TMZ that for geese, you don’t always need a receipt ... so the guy was totally in the clear to have them.

Also, we're told there’s no evidence the man is an immigrant, or Haitian, or had plans to eat the geese. They make it clear the whole story’s being blown out of proportion thanks to Trump’s comments this week and his fans amplifying the narrative online.

Dana Bash went even further when she fact checked J.D. Vance for pushing the same story. It turns out that Springfield's 911 service received only two calls over the last 11 months about Haitians illegally hunting geese--and the Springfield police could not verify either of them! That's right. They could verify ZERO. ZIP. NADA. A big GOOSE EGG.

 

But wait! Those who were pushing the Haitians-eating-pets story weren't giving up so easily. The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project posted a tweet that claimed they had obtained a report to the police by a woman named Anna who claimed that her cat was missing. She said that she had found some meat in her neighbor's yard, and she thought it was from her cat. (The Heritage Foundation's name should ring a bell. They are the ones behind the horrendous Project 2025 that will shape Trump's next presidency, despite Trump's public denials of being associated with it)

  

Let me enlarge the report so you can read it more easily. If this is still too blurry for you, you can blow it up more by going to the original PDF of the report.

Right wingers on Twitter were high-fiving each other and celebrating this police report as if it was the second coming of Christ. These normally Back-the-Blue types were jubilant to be able to prove that the Springfield Police were LYING when they said that there were no reports of pets being eaten by Haitians in Springfield. Hallelujah! Their orange god was exonerated!!!!

The celebrations lasted about 24 hours. That's how long it took for Kris Maher, Valerie Bauerlein, and Tawnell D. Hobbs of the Wall Street Journal to debunk this claim in their in-depth report of what was happening in Springfield. Here are some highlights from this  VERY important article.

 

City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield.

 

“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.” ...

Over the summer, outside neo-Nazi groups—which specialize in exploiting local controversy to foment outrage about migrants—had seized on a local controversy and fanned the narrative of pet-eating Haitians.

Then the Trump campaign blasted those rumors to the world—and kept pushing them even after they were exposed as lies. The Trump campaign continues to run hard at the controversy. Trump last Friday said he planned “large deportations” from Springfield—whose Haitian community is overwhelmingly in the country legally. (Emphasis added).

There you have it. Team Trump KNEW this was BULLSHIT before Trump told this whopper at the debate. The WSJ article continued:

“It induces panic and fear and depletes resources,” said Heck, the city manager. “We’re living the danger that misinformation and created stories leads to.”

 

“We have told those at the national level that they are speaking these things that are untrue,” added Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a registered Republican. But he said claims have been “repeated and doubled down on.”

Vance insisted on CNN this past Sunday that he had firsthand accounts of the incidents from constituents, but the media had paid no attention to migrant problems in American cities “until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.” He added, “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.” (Emphasis added)

J.D. Vance pretends to be a Christian. Many of his supporters want to place the Ten Commandments in schools. I wonder if Vance. has ever read the Ninth Commandment.

After Vance’s tweets on the morning of Sept. 10, Springfield Mayor Rue called a press conference that afternoon to try to contain the damage.

 

He also was faced that evening with the pain that Vance’s tweet was causing locally. Along with promoting the pet-eating rumor, Vance’s post had said a Springfield “child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here .” (Emphasis added.)

The child who J.D. Vance claimed was murdered by a Haitian immigrant was not murdered at all. (Murder requires intent.) The child's name was Aiden Clark, and he was killed in a traffic accident in which a Haitian immigrant driving a minivan crashed into a school bus. Aiden's father, Nathan Clark, made an emotional appeal to politicians like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump to stop using his son's death to score political points. Please, please, please WATCH THIS. And if you happen to be Marc Molinaro, I REALLY want you to watch this. Can you imagine how painful it must be for a father to say,

I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a sixty-year-old White man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt. But if THAT guy killed my eleven-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. The last thing we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces. But even that's not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem as though our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate. And look what you've done to us. We have to get up here and beg them to stop. Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose.

 

 

Continuing on with the Wall Street Journal report:

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. 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, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.

Vance has also added to his claims about Haitians, saying on social media that communicable diseases have been on the rise in Springfield because of the Haitian migration.

Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023—the lowest since 2015. The tuberculosis case numbers in the county are so low (four in 2023, three in 2022, one in 2021) that any little movement can bring a big percentage jump. HIV cases did increase to 31 in 2023, from 17 in 2022 and 12 in 2021. Overall, sexually transmitted infection cases decreased to 965 in 2023, the lowest since 2015.

So the Springfield police weren't lying after all. Well, technically their statement wasn't correct. They did receive a report of a cat whose owner thought it had been eaten. But this report wasn't worth mentioning because it had been closed out after the cat was found. It was an innocent misstatement of fact by the police. Contrast that with Vance's DIRTY STINKIN' RACIST LIES that a Haitian murdered a child, that Haitians were eating cats and dogs, and that communicable diseases were on the rise in Springfield because of Haitians.

OK--so Haitians weren't eating cats and dogs. But were they illegally hunting geese? Apparently not. The Wall Street Journal article reported that there was "a pond where Haitians had been rumored to have taken some of the park’s geese and slaughtered them, a rumor the state wildlife division found no basis for."

Molinaro’s posts are concerning for two reasons. First, I want my Representative make decisions based on facts, not rumors.

But more importantly, defamatory claims like the one Molinaro posted could get people killed. It was people like Molinaro who spread lies that Jews were using the blood of Christian children in matzahs in Nazi Germany that helped lead to the Holocaust. It was people like Molinaro who spread false rumors about Black men raping White woman, especially in the Deep South in the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s that led to innocent Black men being hung. (Fun fact: Donald Trump, who Molinaro supports, has still not apologized for purchasing a full-page ad in four New York City Newspapers calling for the execution of the Central Park Five—even after they were exonerated by DNA tests and the real perpetrator confessed to the mugging.)

The lie told by Trump and Vance and Molinaro has had real-world consequences. Springfield’s schools had to be evacuated and two of its medical facilities were put on temporary lockdown after they received bomb threats. Proud Boys have marched through the streets of Springfield, and the Haitian community has been terrorized. Springfield’s Republican Mayor, Rob Rue, said, “All these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they're hurting our city, and it was their words that did it."

Taylor Popielarz, a reporter for Spectrum News DC has provided us with a long list of Springfield facilities that have been affected by threats in the aftermath of Trump's and his sycophants libel. 

Governor DeWine held a press conference on September 16 in which he said that Springfield had has had 33 bomb threats--all of them hoaxes--as a result of this vicious rumor. DeWine also said these threats were coming in from overseas--and some of them are from one particular country.

 

We don't know which country is behind the death threats, but we DO know that Russia has a history of using disinformation campaigns to worsen pre-existing divisions among us in order to weaken us. Their ultimate goal is to use dirty trickery to set us at each other's throats and start a civil war. Operation Infektion provides the historical background of Russia's, and before that, the Soviet Union's use of disinformation as a weapon against the West. (Note: Putin started his career as an officer in the KGB. Part of his job was to develop disinformation campaigns to weaken us. So exploiting this terrible lie to terrorize an American community would be right up his alley.)

 

 

I don't know if ALL of Springfield's bomb threats are coming from overseas, but let's assume they are. Some of Trump's and Vance's defenders are using this [assumed] fact to somehow exonerate them. "See! See! What they said about the Haitans wasn't not so bad! They wouldn't be getting death threats if it weren't for those foreigners!"

This misses the point in two ways. First, even if this lie resulted in NO threats against the Haitian community, it is the type of lie that had a high likelihood of doing so. How would you like it if the former president, his vice-presidential running mate, and much of the right-wing echo chamber pointed their collective finger at you and accused YOU personally of eating cats and dogs? It's the type of accusation that you know is going to rile people up into hating you. And you will always have to be watching your back to make sure that no one acts on that hatred.

Second, it is not a secret that our enemies are using divisions within our country to weaken us. You can count on them to pour boiling acidic acid on any festering wound they can find. Donald Trump should know this. J.D. Vance should know this. Marc Molinaro should know this. Yet they have deliberately opened a wound that hostile governments could exploit. And even if they could not foresee this possibility, their refusal to retract their claims and apologize after learning the Haitians were receiving death threats from overseas leaves them vulnerable to more threats in the future. Their failure to retract and apologize shows a callous indifference to Haitian suffering and the inconvenience of all those whose lives have been disrupted in Sprinfield. Every time they receive a text, every time they receive a phone call, every time they see someone post a message on the internet saying they should die because they eat pets, they will have to worry, "Is this a threat I can ignore? Is this coming from overseas? Or is this really coming from a racist terrorist closer to home? Is this from someone who might kill me?"

But no matter. Anything for political gain--even if it poisons the body politic. I can see why Russia wants Trump to be our next President. As one Russian commentator said, "I will always root for Trump. Trump is a direct path to Civil War [in the United States]" See 6:59 of this video. (Hat tip to Julia Davis for providing the translation.)

 

 

Molinaro has one thing in common with the Russians who want to start a civil war in the U.S.--They both support Donald Trump. (And if you believed Putin when he said that he wants Kamala Harris to win, watch until the end of the above video. The Russians are laughing at your gullibility. Congratulations on flunking Putin's IQ test.) Now, I don't for a minute think that Molinaro shares Russia's goal of instigating a civil war, but I am not going to vote for someone who supports the same person that the Russians do.

Molinaro could be forgiven for tweeting the vicious rumor about Haitians if he had done it in good faith and if he had deleted the tweet as soon as it was debunked. But he has chosen to leave it up for political reasons, even though it has terrorized others. This goes beyond being vile. This is evil.

This is just one of many reasons why those of us who are in the New York 19th District need to vote for Josh Riley for Congress.

 

Update 10/3/24: Someone has been arrested for illegally hunting geese in Springfield, Ohio. But there's a twist.

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