Various allegations made by presidential candidates in the ongoing election have had great impacts on the media and lives of U.S. citizens. One of these is a statement that former president and current Republican candidate, Donald Trump, made during the presidential debate that was held on Sept. 10, 2024.
The 2024 Presidential Debate garnered the attention of millions after former President Trump claimed that immigrants living in “Springfield, Ohio are eating the pets of the people that live there”. It was one of the 30 false claims that Trump had made throughout the debate.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
– Former President Donald Trump on the 2024 Presidential Debate
These accusations led to dozens of digital threats made towards the Haitian community in Springfield, including the threat to bomb or attack local public schools, universities and the city hall. Under FBI supervision, schools were closed out of fear of these threats. The discrimination against Haitians has rampantly increased since the accusations were made. As stated in an interview transcript from PBS, “Hate groups like the Proud Boys have also been marching through the city… fliers from a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan saying that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were … ‘disease-ridden and filthy’…”
On Sept. 6, 2024, 3:13 PM, User @EndWokeness (End Wokeness) posted on X: Springfield is a small town in Ohio. 4 years ago, they had 60k residents. Under Harris and Biden, 20,000 Haitian immigrants were shipped to the town. Now ducks and pets are disappearing.
On Sept. 8, 2024, 4:46 PM, User: @charliekirk11 (Charlie Kirk) posted on X: Residents of Springfield, OH are reporting that Haitians are eating their family pets, another gift of the Biden-Harris mass immigration replacement plan. Liberals will soon be lecturing Americans on why they need to be sensitive to Haitian culture and accept this as the new normal. Those idiots deserve to be condemned and mocked mercilessly. Save our pets. Secure our borders.
Prior to Trump’s claims, his 2024 Vice Presidential running mate, Senator JD Vance, already accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets despite city officials expressing their denials, saying that it is “baseless”. Furthermore, Ohio Governor DeWine, and prominent member of the Republican party, asserted a strong opinion on the effects of the campaign’s attempt to dismantle the immigrant community through his Op-Ed section in The New York Times, “As a supporter [of the running candidates], I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people”.
Take note that Governor DeWine and his family supports a charity that is programmed to assist schools, such as the Becky DeWine School, based in Haiti since 1998. DeWine has also been proactive in humanizing the Haitian community by raising awareness of the country’s suffering due to poverty and violence.
On Sept. 24, the co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), Guerline Jozef, filed criminal charges against Donald J. Trump and James David “JD” Vance. Under the Clark County Municipal Court, the charges were warranted for eight violated statuses that largely impacted the Haitian community in Ohio. In the 46-page affidavit, the accusations that Trump and Vance made consisted of a “false and dangerous narrative”:
- Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian community is criminally killing and eating neighbor’s dogs and cats, and the local geese.
- “Bearing deadly disease”, referring to the Haitian community.
Both claims were founded from rumors posted on social media applications like Facebook and X posts shown above.
A now deleted Facebook post was made by Erika Lee, a Springfield Resident, in Aug. 2024, claiming that her neighbor’s missing cat was taken by a Haitian member of the community. Later on, she admitted that “she had no firsthand knowledge of the claim she had posted, […] heard the claim from a neighbor who in turn heard it from an acquaintance”. She would later on be interviewed by NBC News, regretting the turn of events. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” she said.
Just days after Lee’s statement, JD Vance admitted to making baseless claims against the Springfield Haitian community.
“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. I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield”
– Sen. JD Vance’s September 15, 2024 Interview with CNN’s Dana Bash
On Sept. 23, a short-questioned interview between The Watchdog (TW in the transcription) and Professor Sciabarra (DR. C in the transcription) of Bellevue College was held. Professor Christina Sciabarra is a current faculty member of the Political Science Division of Bellevue College. She graduated from the US Naval Academy with a B.S. in History, B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arizona, and a Master’s in International Diplomacy from Norwich University.
The interview consisted of questions about misinformation, the Trump Election Campaign, and personal insights on the recent events.
[TW]: (Question 1) Manipulating the public is not an uncommon occurrence, but because of its negative connotations, there is some hesitation with admitting that political campaigns are essentially manipulation tactics. In the case of Donald Trump Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, do you think that they took it too far? [In relation to the Springfield, Ohio claims]
[DR. C]: Yes- and they [Trump and Vance] are actually following a very common playbook from far-right groups [In Europe as well]. Reading their comments, it reminded me of the terminology- They have dropped the specific racial ideologies. Instead, [they] adopted the ideology/narrative of immigration and citizenship: Who has a right to the state’s resources? Who has a right to citizenship in a country?
[DR. C]: Anti-immigration has risen above their other platforms at this point. The Haiti example is another way to get [that] anti-immigration out without constantly [and only] talking about the Southern Border. [It is] racially motivated and [a] stealthy way of keeping the discussion around the Southern Border.
Since the beginning of the Trump Election Campaign, anti-immigration policies have always been supported. During the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump followed the same pattern when he discussed immigration. “You know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens,” he stated. The concept of immigration throughout the convention was implied to be an “act of invasion”, targeting the Latino community for the majority of the campaign’s period.
“Joe and Kamala, they threw out the ‘woke’ blue carpet across the Rio Grande, opened our borders, to what? Murderers and rapists. […] It’s murderers and rapists. Drug cartels. Human traffickers. Terrorists. Chinese spies. And a whole army of illiterate illegal aliens stealing the jobs of Black, brown and blue-collar Americans.”
– Peter Navarro, Former Trump White House adviser, during the RNC.
[TW]: (Question 2) In light of the 2024 Presidential Debate, Trump’s section had about 30 found false claims. Do you believe that fact-checking is an important factor in his campaign?
[DR. C]: Political campaigns are marketing campaigns. The word “manipulation” is crucial. While campaigns are [about] letting people know our values, it’s about why none of the other people [people, referring to the other party] should be considered.
[DR. C]: The use of misinformation- In marketing- giving people one way to look at a thing is an effective tool to get them to stop looking at the other things. Misinformation can be argued- There’s always space for argument for these things. Fact-checking is crucial, but what is difficult is what source to trust to check the facts.
[TW]: (Question 3) How do you think this will affect their [Trump’s] campaign? Consider how it may also affect Harris’s campaign?
[DR. C]: One thing I do want to say is it’s very clear to me that people worked with Trump to reign in his debate speaking style. It [Trump’s new style] forced him to speak on specific issues. [In the debate, he focused] so intently on immigration. Abortion is off the table for them [Trump’s campaign, as it was], because it was addressed by the Supreme Court, the economy is something people can run on, but [the] current administration blames the previous administration for the economy, and so forth. Immigration is always an effective choice. It allows them to tap into different stereotypes and beliefs from what we know, and vilify them because we don’t know these cultures- like the Haitians. This is their best marketing strategy.
[DR. C]: The effect on the Harris and Waltz campaign, they have to address immigration in some way and the other reason is [that] the Republican Party is hitting [it], is that Kamala is where immigration policies are. Because she was the immigration policy holder [She can’t directly distance herself from it]. With the issue around misinformation, it forces the other party [Harris and Waltz] to constantly do the fact-checking or let the misinformation sit and try to keep pushing their message, but who they’re trying to get is the swing voters. You have to be careful what you let linger.
“A swing voter is one ‘who could go either way: a voter who is not so solidly committed to one candidate or the other as to make all efforts at persuasion futile’.”
– William G. Mayer, Professor of Political Science from Northeastern University.
This essentially is a battle between the Democratic and Republican party on who can tally up the swing voters. What are the possible ways to convince these swing voters to support one party more than the other? The significance of these swing votes are often related to the deciding factor of the election race because of their independence from either party. According to William G. Mayer, “If some voters are firm, clear, dependable supporters of one candidate or the other, swing voters are the opposite: those whose final allegiance is in some doubt all the way up until Election Day.”
[TW]: (Question 5) What do you think students or individuals should be cautious of when involving themselves in political campaigns?
[DR. C]: My first suggestion is to focus on local elections. These are people you can know and get a good insight on [the] actual person. The national level- It eats up so much space and it matters. But if a president doesn’t have a legislature that is gonna pass their agenda, the authoritarian part of our government- If you want to not lose your faith in democracy and feel your impact- local places are where to do that. If you are following along on a national campaign, [do] as much follow-up research you can do. Anything from their platform websites, research. See who those people are. Google search is pretty accurate about who is actually funding- paying for the candidates and their information.
“If people are feeling overwhelmed or nervous by the election, there is- whether you can vote or not- always a way to get engaged through the system. Local organizations. Student government. Social media. Journalism. You can always have an impact. There are things we can do about it.”
– Professor Christina Sciabarra, PhD. (Political Science Professor in Bellevue College)
