From quite literally the moment Donald Trump descended on the country\u2019s presidential campaigns in 2015, he has made misinformation and demagoguery about migrant crime his political calling card.<\/p>\n
But even in that context, Trump\u2019s comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, purportedly eating pets break ground.<\/p>\n
Relying on little more than the thinnest of rumors \u2014 and despite his claim being debunked to his face as tens of millions of Americans watched during Tuesday\u2019s presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris \u2014 Trump has continued to train a spotlight on a very specific group of people in a very specific place. And he has declined to back down despite threats on Springfield\u2019s city hall, a school and other buildings. Trump on Friday even pledged a mass deportation operation in Springfield, despite the Haitian immigrants being there legally.<\/p>\n
Given the laughingstock this has become and the ugly concoction that is apparently brewing in Springfield, it\u2019s worth asking: Why? It\u2019s one thing to demagogue an issue; it\u2019s another to do so in such a ridiculous and potentially dangerous way.<\/p>\n
The apparent reason for the continued gambit is that it focuses attention on the issue Trump views as his political silver bullet: migrant crime. Springfield is, after all, a town that has recently seen a large influx of Haitian immigrants. If Trump\u2019s version of events caught on, it could be employed as shorthand to justify his migrant crime strategy. And we\u2019ve seen how Trump\u2019s misinformation can catch on, despite all the fact-checking \u2014 at least with his devoted supporters.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not at all evident that this is nearly the electoral winner Trump seems to think it is. Besides the significant moral concerns, the downside is that Trump could undercut the entire enterprise by making a claim that is specific and debunkable enough to give lie to the rest of his migrant-crime rhetoric \u2014 at least with middle-of-the-road voters.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been evident for a while that this is more than Trump repeating a rumor. It\u2019s a campaign strategy. The strategy didn\u2019t start with Trump, after all. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), first posted about it on Monday. (Vance before Tuesday\u2019s debate conceded that the rumors might be wrong, just hours before Trump stated them as fact.)<\/p>\n
It also flows from plenty of things Trump has said before.<\/p>\n
This is a former president who, after all, effectively launched his political career by falsely casting Barack Obama as lying about his foreign birth. Trump launched his 2016 campaign by claiming Mexico was sending drugs, rapists and criminals across the U.S.-Mexico border. (\u201cAnd some, I assume, are good people,\u201d he added, suggesting those \u201cgood people\u201d were a relatively small share.)<\/p>\n
Trump has also targeted Haitians for particular derision, reportedly saying they \u201call have AIDS\u201d and asking why we allow immigrants from \u201cshithole countries\u201d like Haiti. As the 2024 campaign has worn on, Trump has cast immigrants as a criminal scourge on our country \u2014 even as the evidence shows they commit less crime than native-born Americans.<\/p>\n
Despite this long history, it\u2019s not at all clear the approach has paid electoral dividends.<\/p>\n
Yes, Trump won the 2016 election while playing up his border wall, but he also faced one of the most unpopular opponents in modern history, in Hillary Clinton. And every major election since then has proved disappointing for the GOP \u2014 including in 2022, when Republicans keyed on a border surge and crime as their potential game changers. (The president\u2019s party almost always loses substantial ground in midterm elections, but Democrats had a historically good election against that backdrop.)<\/p>\n
Just because Republicans didn\u2019t win doesn\u2019t mean these issues didn\u2019t assist them. But there is little evidence that migrant crime is a pervasive concern for Americans.<\/p>\n
There is no question that anti-immigrant sentiment surged amid record-setting illegal border crossings in recent years. Gallup data has shown a significant rise in the percentage of Americans who want immigration decreased. And as of June last year, 47 percent of Americans said migrants were making crime worse, vs. just 5 percent who said they were making it better.<\/p>\n
But 47 percent isn\u2019t a majority. And other data \u2014 while limited \u2014 suggests this isn\u2019t a huge point of emphasis for Americans:<\/p>\n
A late 2022 PRRI poll showed only around one-third of Americans agreed at least \u201csomewhat\u201d with the idea that immigrants were increasing crime in local communities.<\/span> There\u2019s also the fact that illegal border crossings have dropped sharply in recent months, to four-year lows, perhaps reducing the import of the broader issue.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean these numbers won\u2019t rise as Trump focuses like a laser on this issue. But it doesn\u2019t exactly suggest this is a sleeping electoral giant of an issue, either.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just as possible that Trump is running out of ideas, and so his strategy is to go back to the well, up the ante and the misinformation, and hope it turns out better for his party than it has before.<\/p>\n The potential downside is that the many Americans who aren\u2019t predisposed to Trump\u2019s version of migrant crime could see Trump\u2019s misinformation for what it is and dismiss the rest of what he says about the subject.<\/p>\n And all the while, Springfield twists in the wind.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n From quite literally the moment Donald Trump descended on the country\u2019s presidential campaigns in 2015, he has made misinformation and demagoguery about migrant crime his political calling card. But even in that context, Trump\u2019s comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, purportedly eating pets break ground. Relying on little more than the thinnest of rumors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nA May Reuters-Ipsos poll showed just 22 percent said immigrants were more likely to be criminals than people born in the United States.<\/span>
\nAnd a March AP-NORC poll showed nearly 6 in 10 Americans said the risk of migrant crime was \u201cminor\u201d or \u201cnot a risk at all.\u201d And just 3 in 10 thought immigrants were having any kind of \u201cmajor impact\u201d on their own communities \u2014 a number that suggests this might not be a top-tier personal concern even for many of those worried about it.<\/span><\/p>\n