The Brooklyn Rail

The race-baiting xenophobic slurs about Haitians in Ohio were started by JD Vance more than two months ago, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing where he was trying to blame rising housing prices on immigrants. In August, a resident of Springfield posted in a private Facebook group that she’d heard that immigrants had stolen a neighbor’s cat. The woman later repudiated the rumor and apologized for the post, but Vance picked up the rumor and ran with it. On September 10, Trump trumpeted the lie to 67 million people who tuned in to his debate with Kamala Harris: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

The way he said it was remarkable. He of course knew then that it wasn’t true, but he had to sell it to voters. Knowing full well how many vulnerable people were going to be attacked, and some of them probably killed, the venom in his speech was breathtaking. He truly hated these unknown migrants and their families, and wanted to exterminate them, wanted them to suffer.

The fact that none of what Trump and Vance said was remotely true has had no impact on their campaign of vicious lies. In fact, JD Vance admitted as much on Sunday. In an interview by Dana Bash on CNN, Vance said, “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. I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it.”

On Tuesday, September 17, Heather Cox Richardson reported:

For the third day in a row, officials today had to evacuate two elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, citing threats that have led to safety concerns. The city has also canceled “CultureFest,” its annual celebration of diversity, arts, and culture, and the local colleges are meeting virtually out of safety concerns. The Bureau of Motor Vehicles has had to close, as has the Ohio License Bureau.

Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said that there have been “at least 33” bomb threats against schools and public offices after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, spread the lie that Haitian immigrants to Springfield have been eating the pets of their white neighbors. DeWine reiterated that the immigrants in Springfield are there legally, and noted that he has authorized troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol to provide additional security at the district's 18 school buildings.

JD Vance grew up 40 miles down the road from Springfield, and the Haitian immigrants who live there, that he is maligning and setting up for attack, are his constituents, as are all the other townspeople whose lives have been turned upside down by his hate. Vance’s senate seat was purchased for him for $15 million by Peter Thiel, who is also the only employer Vance has ever had. The Haitian immigrants he is targeting came to Springfield to work.

Governor DeWine told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the migrants are welcome and the statements by Donald Trump and JD Vance are not:

I think it's unfortunate that this came up. Let me tell you what we do know, though. What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They're very happy to have them there, and frankly, that's helped the economy.

Even so, DeWine refused to renounce Trump and Vance, and grimaced when he was asked to.

The Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby is credited with the naming of “the dead cat strategy,” also known as “deadcatting.” When you’re losing an argument or a campaign, throw a dead cat on the table. This will immediately freeze the discussion in disgust, and everybody will be talking about the dead cat, not the argument you were losing. Boris Johnson promptly hired Crosby as his campaign manager for the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections, wherein he successfully employed the dead cat strategy numerous times.

Trump has been deadcatting like mad since at least 2016. It remains to be seen whether or not the dead cat strategy will work in this instance.

What is it that Trump does not want us to be talking about right now? It’s the fact that he was completely dominated and destroyed by Kamala Harris in the debate, that his choice of Vance for a running mate was one of the worst he’s ever made, and that he is losing this race. The brilliant Republican pollster Frank Lutz has gone on record to say that Trump will lose this election because of losing that debate so badly, and Bill Maher, who has been right about Trump when almost everyone else was wrong, also says he thinks the Trump Show is coming to an end with the cat-eating episode, and that he will lose this election.