Ohio Lieutenant Governor Decides Now’s the Time for a Sick Joke

While the town of Springfield, Ohio, experiences bomb threats as the result of a false racist rumor claiming that Haitian immigrants are capturing and eating people’s pets, ducks, and geese, Ohio’s lieutenant governor is making jokes.

Jon Husted thought it was fit to post a photo of two geese on X Friday with the caption: “Most Americans agree that these migrants should be deported.”

The post came after three schools in the town were shut down earlier in the day due to threats they received, and one day after several government facilities in the town had to be evacuated over bomb threats. The threats have drawn the ire of town leaders, such as Mayor Rob Rue, who said Thursday, “Unfortunately, right now we have to focus on making sure this rhetoric is dispelled, that these rumors are just—they’re just not true.

“You know, Springfield is a beautiful place, and your pets are safe in Springfield,” Rue added, laughing slightly at the absurdity of having to say such a thing.

The fake rumor has its origin in unproven social media posts and was egged on by the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, whose members marched through the town and spoke at Town Council meetings. Right-wing politicians, including Trump and running mate J.D. Vance, have repeated it, giving it a wider audience and fueling the threats.

Trump’s mention of the rumor during the debate, while sounding comical on its face, is likely the biggest driving force behind the its staying in the right-wing discourse and riling up the people behind the threats. Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine isn’t helping either, refusing to denounce the remarks from Vance and other leading Republicans on Tuesday. Husted and the state’s leaders should be trying to shut the rumor down and make sure people in Springfield, particularly the Haitian population, feel safe, instead of fueling a hateful mob. Better yet, so should Trump and Vance.

It’s been a very bad, no-good week for Donald Trump, and between his poor performance during Tuesday night’s debate and his racist conspiracy theory about Haitian migrants coming back to bite him, the Republican presidential nominee appears to have lost some of his composure.

During a rambling and largely nonsensical presser in Los Angeles on Friday, Trump constantly tripped over himself, outright rejecting important questions from reporters while making absurd claims, such as the fact that the country was “perfect” in January 2021.

In one portion of his speech, Trump badly botched the name of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, by referring to her as “Comrade Howard” while shaking his head. He also referred to Harris as a “radical left Marxist Communist fascist,” an ideological combination that is technically impossible, and attacked her for her “woman-made destruction.”

But not everything Trump said was outlandish or wrong. In another section of his speech, Trump dropped an undeniable detail: Not all states have a Pacific Ocean.

Shortly after the speech ended, Trump had one final thought to share, which he posted in brief on Truth Social: “#.” At the time of publication, the post had more than 2,700 likes.

As MAGA allies raise concern over Laura Loomer’s outlandish and conspiratorial remarks, Donald Trump simply shrugged them off in a press conference Friday afternoon. 

“Laura’s a supporter. I don’t control Laura, Laura has to say what she wants, she’s a free spirit,” Trump told reporters, when asked about her recent comments. “I can’t tell Laura what to do, she’s a supporter.” He then added that he didn’t know why a reporter would be asking about Loomer at all.  

It seems as though Trump has decided to play dumb about the discourse happening in his party about Loomer’s racist comments about Kamala Harris and her continued insistence that 9/11 was an inside job. 

“She is a strong person, she’s got strong opinions, and I don’t know what she said,” Trump said, as reporters proceeded to push the former president about his “supporter.”

“She made racist remarks about your opponent. She also espoused conspiracy theories about 9/11. Do you disavow those remarks?” asked one reporter. 

“Well, I have to see what the remarks are. You’re telling me for the first time,” said an increasingly frustrated Trump. “I’ll go take a look and put out a statement later on,” he replied, dodging the question. His claims that he was unaware are hard to believe, in part because Representative Marjorie Green said on Thursday that she had contacted Trump directly about Loomer’s behavior. 

“What value do you feel that Laura Loomer brings to you?” asked another reporter. 

“She brings a spirit to us,” replied Trump. “We have very spirited people.”

Donald Trump’s racist conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants has taken root in Springfield, Ohio—but the MAGA leader doesn’t seem to care about the real-world implications of his violent rhetoric.

Fielding questions from reporters in Los Angeles on Friday, the Republican presidential nominee aggressively veered away from answering a question about a swath of school closures in Springfield that followed the proliferation of the far-right conspiracy accusing Haitian immigrants of eating their neighbors’ pets in the Midwestern city.

“No, no, no. The real threat is what’s happening at our border,” Trump said. “Because you have thousands of people being killed by illegal migrants coming in. And also dying. You have women dying as they come up, they’re coming up in large groups. We call it a caravan, I think I came up with that name but it’s really what it is—10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people—and you have large numbers of women being killed in those caravans coming up to this country.”

“And then when they get here, they can go into the country and they end up being sex slaves and everything else,” Trump continued. “Those are your real problems. Not the problem that you’re talking about.”

The city at the center of the conspiracy shut down three of its schools on Friday, reported ABC News. Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary were evacuated after receiving unspecified information from the Springfield Police Division, while Roosevelt Middle School was closed from the beginning of the school day due to similar threats, reported the Springfield News-Sun.

Springfield saw even more closures on Thursday, when several other schools and a significant portion of Springfield’s government facilities—including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School—were shut down due to bomb threats.

Multiple city officials and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine have stated that the conspiracy is false. But that hasn’t stopped the Republican presidential ticket from endangering an entire town’s worth of people.

Donald Trump still thinks highly of his Tuesday debate performance, and lashed out at a Fox News reporter Friday who suggested it didn’t go too well.

After a long, rambling speech by Trump, the reporter mentioned the former president’s recent admission that he doesn’t want another presidential debate, and noted that some of his Republican allies said that he “missed the mark” during the debate. Trump cut her off, and dismissed the characterization. 

“No, no, no, excuse me. Most of my Republican allies have said I was great. You’re just like a lot of other people at Fox. Why don’t you say, 94 percent of the Republicans said I did phenomenally in the debate,” Trump said. 

“Some said that I could have been tougher. I don’t know how I could have been tougher when I said he’s the worst president and she is the worst vice president in the history of our country,” Trump continued.

Trump is notoriously thin-skinned, and has a love-hate relationship with Fox. The morning after Tuesday’s debate, he vented on Fox & Friends and demanded Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham moderate a future debate. In the past, he’s complained that the network hasn’t been doing enough to help him, even though they’ve long been a conservative entity, and have spread even his most far-fetched election conspiracies. 

Is this another example of Trump’s ongoing cognitive decline? During Tuesday’s debate, the former president was easily baited and outwitted by Kamala Harris. He couldn’t stick to the game plan made by his advisers of tying today’s problems to the vice president, and he even  tried to combine right-wing talking points on transgender people, migrants, and criminals. On Afghanistan policy, he gave a word-salad answer. 

There are also his various mental lapses during the presidential campaign. He’s seemingly forgotten who he’s running against, made weird rants about subjects like bacon and wind power, and accidentally praised Harris and President Biden’s record at one point. Perhaps Fox needs to wait a few more days and treat the former president with kid gloves. They seem to be doing so already, editing out his criticism Friday when replaying his comments. Soon enough, he might even forget this exchange even happened.