At this week’s debate, Donald Trump spread the deranged lie that immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Tensions are escalating, and terror is spreading: Haitian immigrants living there say they fear for their safety, and on Thursday, Springfield’s City Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat. What if these searing tensions are exactly what Trump and his MAGA allies want? Not that they want violence, but rather that they see supercharged social rifts as desirable? We talked to Andrew Egger, a writer for The Bulwark who has a good new piece on Springfield, about how this saga opens a window on the darkness and malevolence of the MAGA movement. Listen to this episode here.
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Terror in Ohio: How Trump-MAGA Rage Is Ripping Apart a Small Town
As Trump and J.D. Vance escalate social tensions in Springfield with vile lies about immigrants, the writer of a new piece on the whole saga explains how the MAGA hate machine really works.
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Former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia, on September 10