Even a casual follower of political news might be thinking that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seems pretty screwy these days. You might have seen clips of the debate, perhaps a montage of all the times Donald Trump couldn’t look VP Kamala Harris in the eye as she repeatedly pummeled and mocked him. Maybe you heard about Trump tweeting about how he “hates” Taylor Swift (in this, your impression would be accurate, as he did literally tweet “I hate Taylor Swift,” which is an objectively weird thing to write about a very popular and generally inoffensive pop star). Perhaps you read about Trump praising the Republican candidate for North Carolina Governor, who you also heard calls himself as “black Nazi” — that’s not normal, is it? Or maybe you heard how he and VP candidate Sen. J.D. Vance have been saying wild stuff about Haitian immigrants eating house pets in Springfield, Ohio. Altogether, you might be struck by a sense of random stuff emanating from the Trump campaign, all very. . . well, very Trump!
And if you happen to be a reader of major papers of record like the Washington Post or the New York Times, you’d in fact find news analyses to back up this sense of Trump campaign disarray, and that you’re not alone in feeling like you’re experiencing an undifferentiated blast. The Post, digging into recent Trump campaign dynamics, asserts that “with just 45 days left until the election, the past three weeks reveal whatever control and self-restraint helped launch Trump’s third presidential campaign has largely disappeared in the crucial final stretch.” And the Times points to a sense of “chaos” around Trump, while CNN notes that “Wild weeks of outlandish rhetoric by the ex-president have revived memories of the cacophony of his four White House years and shattered perceptions that he’s running a more disciplined campaign than in 2020 or 2016.”
Yet such analyses are quick to point out that this alleged chaos is not the same as Trump being on track to lose, as they point to tight polls and a still-savagely-loyal Trump base. The Times avers that “this year, the nation has met the crush of chaos with little more than a shrug and, some strategists say, a desire to tune out the campaign altogether,” and that “The tepid response to Mr. Trump’s latest round of provocations reflects both the nation’s deep partisan splits and a sense that voters are inured to his style after three election cycles where his showmanship has dominated the news.” In a similar vein, CNN notes that “the nature of the race — a toss-up contest in swing states — has not budged.”
There is more than a grain of truth in the ideas that the Trump campaign is growing desperate, that his extreme statements reflect this to some extent, and that so far this has not seemed to make much difference to the existence of a continued close race between Trump and Harris (though polling averages do suggest a narrow Harris lead rather than a truly deadlocked race). In addition to the examples noted above, there’s also the borderline absurd pandering Trump has addressed to young male voters (he is literally vowing to be a defender of vaping freedom) and his deeply insane appeals to women that with him in office, he will act as their “protector” and that they will be safe, happy, and never needing to worry their pretty little heads about abortion issues ever again. And at still another appearance, he warned Jewish Americans that they’d be to blame if he lost the election. More than ever, Trump seems willing to say anything — appeals to young men’s smoking pleasures, misogynistic vows to protect women, bizarre anti-semitic threats against the Jewish population — to try to regain the Oval Office.
Yet viewing the last few weeks as a blur of interchangeable outrages, incompetences, and violations of decency — of Trump just being Trump —means we risk obscuring the truly important stories and stakes of this election. The underlying reality is that this election is about fundamental conflicts in our politics and society, the outcome of which will affect not only our political future but our daily existence: whether the U.S. will be a democracy or an autocracy; whether women count as equal citizens in our country; whether we address climate change or condemn ourselves to ever-increasing precarity as the natural world collapses around us. This means that every storyline in the news is hardly equal, even as many speak ill of Trump’s capacities.
I would argue that the “Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs” slander perpetuated by Trump and Vance may be the most important story of the last few weeks, as it speaks to perhaps the most potent conflict at play in the U.S.: whether non-white Americans will assume their full share of power in the country, with the U.S. evolving into a true multi-ethnic democracy. Their rhetoric around Springfield, Ohio embodies the most primal, destructive forces propelling the former president and the larger MAGA movement, and constitutes an abhorrent attempt to recruit more Americans to the MAGA cause. Above all, it shines a spotlight on the white supremacism that is the beating heart of Trumpism — even as Trump and Vance claim to be talking only about immigration — and specifically on what may be the most fundamental struggle of this election: the battle over who gets to be considered a real American. Trump and Vance’s deranged direct targeting of thousands of innocent migrants presents a signal opportunity for defenders of American democracy to expose this reactionary movement’s vile strategies and goals.
Much of my confidence in making this case comes from the fact that various political writers have already been sounding the alarm as to the importance of events around Springfield, doing stellar analyses of the story for the past few weeks and making an implicit ongoing case that this story merits continued inquiry into all its rancid fullness. In particular, pieces by Greg Sargent, Jamelle Bouie, and Adam Serwer have all united moral outrage over the disparagement of Haitian immigrants with sharp critiques of how Trump and Vance’s words link up with and advance a broader right-wing vision for America — one that is central to understanding the profound stakes of this election.
Such media attention has been particularly important as the Democratic Party, including the Harris campaign, has pulled its punches relative to the outrage and pushback that the Republicans’ rhetoric and provocations justly deserve. This is not to say they’ve let it slide, or haven’t at some level recognized its importance. For instance, Joe Biden has made strong and unambiguous statements in defense of the Haitian immigrants, while Harris herself has criticized Trump and Vance’s attacks. But the notion that this is a fight just over immigration has clearly constrained Democrats from giving in to Trump’s pretty clear wish to make Springfield as big an issue as he can. Immigration is weak ground for Democrats, goes the general reasoning, so why take the bait? Besides, you can imagine some Democrats believing this whole “eating dogs and cats” rhetoric will likely negate any political advantage Trump might get from inserting an immigration story into the news cycle for going on three weeks. And perhaps they’re right.
Viewed from a more proactive perspective, though, the MAGA onslaught against Springfield’s new arrivals is an opportunity to fully highlight and denounce elements of this reactionary movement that go far beyond ideas of “border security” and limiting immigration, and that are fundamental to Trump’s appeal to voters to put him back in office. What we’ve witnessed highlights the degree to which Trump’s avowedly anti-immigration attitudes rely on a dehumanization, cruelty, and propaganda rooted in racism. The implicit message of Trump’s remarks, and those of Vance, is that darker-skinned people steal jobs, bring disease, and generally upset the proper order of things. From the lies about eating pets, to the lies that they are spreading disease, to the lies that they are murdering fellow residents of Springfield, to the lies that they are sucking away resources like housing and jobs, they are described as less than human, even innately evil, vampiric and implacable. The portrait is of an alien, incomprehensible enemy against whom no weakness should be shown, to whom no compassion should be extended.
It is notable that these attacks have been unleashed despite the fact that the great majority of the Haitians in Springfield are in fact legal immigrants, to say nothing of the fact that they appear to have helped revitalize the city; as Adam Serwer notes, “The Haitians in Springfield are living and working there legally using green cards, humanitarian parole, and Temporary Protected Status, a legal immigration status for people who cannot return safely to their country of origin.” Crucially, though, this is irrelevant to Trump and Vance. Indeed, Vance has explicitly declared that he doesn’t care about their official status, and will continue to call them “illegal.”
For Trump and Vance, the problem is not just that they are immigrants, or even illegal, but that something about them means that they are an irredeemably illegitimate, undesired group of others who don’t belong here. And the basic reason they don’t belong is because they’re not white. In other words, a story framed by Trump, the media, and even the Democrats as being part of the “immigration debate” is only partially or superficially that. Greg Sargent broke through the collective fog and articulated this crucial point earlier than anyone else I’ve seen, as he wrote that, “For Trump and key elements of MAGA, Springfield is not really about border security, or the proper pace of legal immigration, or how best to assimilate new arrivals. Rather, it’s a stand-in for a subterranean argument about the desirable ethnoracial makeup of the American population.” That is, Trump (and Vance) are using attacks on Haitian immigrants to make a larger argument for who counts as a real American — and the only people who count, in their view, are white people. This helps explain the sheer viciousness of their lies about the Haitian community in Springfield; as Sargent puts it:
Trump actively wants the argument over immigration to be as charged with hate and rage as possible. He doesn’t think that will alienate swing voters. He thinks it will activate their latent MAGA tendencies. The picture Trump is seizing on Springfield to invoke—that of a largely white, innocent heartland town getting ravaged by dark, alien hordes who basically constitute a subhuman species—simply cannot be a distraction from the immigration debate. To Trump, it is the immigration debate.
That is, when Trump talks about Springfield being overrun by dark-skinned outsiders, he is actually telling a story about the U.S. as a whole being hideously transformed by non-whites. In this, it is a story about non-white U.S. citizens as well as immigrants. It is an argument, appealing to the most primal feelings of some white Americans, that the U.S. is a country for white people, that white rights and dominance are paramount, and that white people constitute the true citizenry that must stick together to defend itself.
And so the vicious lies that Trump and Vance tell defile and endanger not only those specifically targeted, but also a huge swath of non-white American citizens as well. They and their MAGA allies talk about immigrants as a fig leaf to cover up their incitement of white Americans’ fears about the gradual browning of America, indifferent to stirring up hatred of anyone who doesn’t fit their strict definition of belonging, even if they are nominally fellow citizens.
Our public discourse is poorly served by the GOP being able to exploit white Americans’ racial anxiety and racism by conducting a proxy war against immigrants, while the Democrats and much of the center and left proceed as if we are just talking about immigrants. When Republican politicians like Trump speak to fears indirectly, it allows them to harness emotional responses that can feel primal and difficult to process logically; by extension, such appeals become difficult for Democrats to counter with recourse to reason and facts. Like an individual beset by psychological conflicts, the country would be better off by making fully conscious those thoughts and feelings that are buried or exist in a liminal space between denial and comprehension.
This conflict over American identity being played out around “immigration” is closely linked to another defining theme of this presidential race: whether the U.S. will remain a democracy or become a one-party state dominated by Trump and the GOP. The GOP’s animosity to democracy isn’t arbitrary — it’s born out of an understanding that a party based on its appeal to white people will continue to lose power in a diversifying democratic nation where the majority rules. Given the choice between changing in a liberal, pro-democracy direction or imposing authoritarian solutions to its minority status, the Republican Party led by Trump has chosen the latter path, essentially declaring war on democracy on various fronts. From GOP-controlled states creating gerrymanders that restrict the voting of non-white citizens, to voter ID laws that disproportionately target minorities, to a right-wing-controlled Supreme Court that rubber stamps such policies, the GOP has turned itself into an authoritarian juggernaut, driven in large part by resistance to the growing presence and power of non-white Americans, whom the white supremacist mindset cannot bear considering as equals.
It also seems politically advantageous, not to mention morally right, to address head on the import of the vicious language aimed at immigrants specifically. Trump and Vance are trying to inspire hatred for the Haitians and other newcomers, which they would clearly harness for their mass deportations plans in a second Trump term. As Jamelle Bouie writes, “One can imagine Trump spreading Springfield-esque lies from the Oval Office directly to the American public. One can imagine a Vice President Vance touring cities with new immigrant populations, attacking them with the same smears he’s used to target the Haitian community of Springfield, spreading hate so that the public will accept the mass deportation of millions of immigrants.” In other words, what we are seeing is a clear template for future action that would represent the U.S.’s descent into a path previously trod by countries associated with unspeakable repression, societal disruption, and economic chaos. Moreover, talking about such expansively hateful language is a way to communicate to Americans that a Trump regime of extreme deportation would threaten citizens as well, as the language and propaganda intended to build support would inevitably be aimed at dehumanizing all non-whites, as we’ve already seen on display in Ohio.
At bottom, the anti-immigrant hatred on display in Trump and Vance’s rants about Springfield points the way to a greatly diminished and corrupt destiny for America, a vision not of making America great but of making us pathetic and morally repugnant. Shockingly, this appears to be the preference of Trump and his followers, so long as they remain atop the diminished and crumbling wreck that remains. This is a point made by Adam Serwer at previous times during the Trump era, and he sees it happening now around the Springfield rhetoric:
Their actions point to a political theory of the election, which is that fearmongering about immigrants, especially Black immigrants, will scare white people into voting for Trump. They also point to an ideological theory of the nation, which is that America belongs to white people, and that the country would be better if it were poorer and weaker, as long as it were also whiter. Trump and Vance have a specific policy agenda for socially engineering the nation through state force to be whiter than it is now: mass deportation, repealing birthright citizenship, and denaturalization of American citizens. This agenda, in addition to being immoral, would wreck the American economy.
What appears to be MAGA’s obsessive focus on immigration reveals in turn an obsession with white supremacism, which is to be defended even if the means of doing so will surely sap the country’s collective power, wealth, and future prospects. For all the talk of immigrants poisoning the blood of the country, it is in fact Trump and his enablers who are ready to engage in a bloodletting of the nation, metaphorically and all too plausibly for real, that aims to racially purify the country no matter the damage.