Even Vivek Ramaswamy Admits Trump’s Migrant Conspiracy Is Fake

Even Donald Trump’s allies can’t seem to find any evidence of the Haitian immigrant conspiracy that’s plagued Springfield, Ohio, since it was elevated by the top of the Republican presidential ticket two weeks ago.

After a visit to the beleaguered Ohio town, biotech millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy brushed off the plainly racist MAGA theory that Haitian residents had been stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

“Having gone to Springfield, I didn’t see that evidence,” Ramaswamy said during a Tuesday appearance on CNN, before attempting to flip the script back on Democrats.

“So when we’re getting into fact-checking, I think we should apply the same standard 360 degrees,” Ramaswamy continued, referring to comments Kamala Harris has made about women “bleeding out in parking lots” due to abortion bans.

Host Kasie Hunt was quick to push back, mentioning Amber Thurman, a woman who died in Georgia after waiting more than 20 hours for care under the state’s restrictive abortion ban. But Ramaswamy was unfazed, despite having just admitted that there is truth behind Harris’s words and none behind Trump’s.

“Let’s not use the fringe words that somebody on either side might say,” he said. “And let’s focus on the actual content of the debate, even when we disagree most. I think that’s going to be a key step to reviving our country.”

Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even J.D. Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the Haitian immigrant conspiracy is false.

Since Vance and Trump began elevating the myth just two weeks ago, Springfield has received at least 33 bomb threats, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities, including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School.

Meanwhile, the surrounding area has seen a restructuring of its local Republican boards in light of the controversial conspiracy. One Ohio sheriff lost his election duties after he elevated the conspiracy by inviting locals to send him the addresses of constituents with Harris-Walz signage in their yards.

Donald Trump just can’t stop talking about Kamala Harris working at McDonald’s—and now he’s escalating things for absolutely no reason.

Harris has previously said that she worked at the popular fast food chain when she was a college student, and referred to her experience as part of her call for livable wages and protections for workers from sexual harassment and abuse.

Trump, whose first job as the son of a real estate mogul was investing in real estate, seemingly cannot tolerate this bullet point on Harris’s résumé, and has latched on to right-wing conspiracy theories that it was a lie. The former president has become so obsessed with trying to discredit Harris’s job experience that he told a crowd of his supporters he would try out working at McDonald’s for the day.

“I think I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s next week, some place,” Trump said during a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday. “I’m gonna go to a McDonald’s, and I’m going to work the french fry job for about a half an hour. I want to see how it is.”

As Trump spoke about Harris’s résumé, he got so worked up he started shouting, almost incoherently. “But she said she worked, and grew up in terrible conditions, she worked at McDonald’s, it was such—SHE NEVER WORKED THERE!

“And these FAKE news reporters will never report it. They don’t want to report it because they’re FAKE! They’re FAKE! They don’t want to report it,” Trump said. Unfortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, the press does not typically report on stories if they’re not true.

“She never worked at McDonald’s, but it was a big part of her résumé,” Trump continued.

Here, Trump appears to overstate the role that Harris has given her experience at McDonald’s. Harris explained at a campaign event in June 2019 that “I did the french fries and I did the ice cream.”

Trump explained his own in-depth fact-checking process, to show how he was able to determine Harris was lying: “They went to, they went to the different places, ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Did she work here?’ ‘Did she work here?’ She said, ‘We don’t know who the hell she is, leave us the hell alone, we’re making hamburgers!’” He did not clarify who the “she” who told “them” to leave her alone is.

Clearly, Harris’s claim that she worked at McDonald’s is eating away at Trump—he already ranted about the same thing in a post on Truth Social last week.

“How bad is it when a Candidate running for Office makes a major part of her Campaign that she works at McDonald’s, and it turns out not to be true, but the worst part is the Media refuses to talk about it!” Trump wrote.

At a campaign rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Donald Trump railed against Haitian immigrants, riling up the crowd who began chanting for their deportation.

Trump warned that left-wing think tanks are trying to “inundate” small towns like those in Pennsylvania, changing their character, and claimed that “they will never be the same.” He then mentioned the increase of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—who are in the country legally—and alluded to the racist pet-eating conspiracy that his campaign has helped to fuel.

“Do you think Springfield will ever be the same? I don’t think. The fact is, and I’ll say it now, you have to get ’em the hell out, you have to get ’em out, I’m sorry,” Trump said. “Get ’em out. Can’t have it. Can’t have it. They’ve destroyed it.”

The crowd roared its approval as soon as Trump said, “Get ’em out,” and then began chanting, “Send them back.”

For several weeks, Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have repeated and fueled a racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are capturing and eating pets, ducks, and geese, with Trump even repeating it during the presidential debate. Trump has used it to bolster his plan for mass deportations if he returns to the White House, and Vance has doubled down despite being fully aware that the story isn’t true. Meanwhile, the town has been inundated with violent threats to its hospitals, schools, and government buildings.

Last week, Trump singled out another town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania, for its Haitian population, drawing an immediate response from town officials, who said that Trump’s claims weren’t true. Like the immigrants in Springfield, Charleroi’s recent arrivals are in the United States legally. But the Trump campaign isn’t likely to stop its attacks, especially since the former president and convicted felon relied on anti-immigrant slogans in his first campaign in 2016. It will be up to Democrats to find a way to counter Trump’s hateful and odious message.

Representative D’Esposito doesn’t want to answer questions about a report that he gave jobs in his office to his former lover and his fiancée’s daughter.

After a scoop from The New York Times, the Long Island politician is under fire for this possible nepotism, which could be grounds for a House ethics investigation. It’s a little ironic, given that D’Esposito led the charge and eventual expulsion of former fellow New York Republican George Santos from Congress.

After the news broke Monday evening, D’Esposito could be seen dodging reporters, hurrying away from even softball questions. His only answer came when he was asked if he believed the report was a “political attack”—to which he responded, “I do.”

As he gave reporters the silent treatment on Capitol Hill, he released a formal statement Monday night that did little to deny the accusation and instead attacked the media.

“The latest political tabloid garbage being peddled by The New York Times is nothing more than a slimy, partisan ‘hit piece’ designed to distract Long Islanders from Democrats’ failing record on border security, the economy, and foreign policy,” he wrote. “My personal life has never interfered with my ability to deliver results for New York’s 4th district, and I have upheld the highest ethical standards of personal conduct. Voters deserve better than the Times’ gutter politics.”

D’Esposito faces a tough race in New York’s 4th congressional district in a rematch against Democrat Laura Gillen. The Nassau County GOP has defended the Republican congressman against the reports, calling the Times piece “politically motivated and baseless mud-slinging.”

Santos, meanwhile, is celebrating his colleague’s downfall.

“Before anyone says anything, YES I’m petty!,” wrote Santos on X in response to the video of D’Esposito hustling away from reporters. “This is just the tip of the iceberg folks!”

House Republicans have a slim four-seat majority in the House, meaning the pressure is on for the New York congressmen to find a better answer, and quick.

Donald Trump is still escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In a thinly veiled threat on Truth Social, the Republican presidential nominee likened immigration to “the destruction of America” and promised that, if elected, he would end “migrant flights” to Pennsylvania immediately and send “those who do not belong… back home.”

“It takes centuries to build the unique character of each state. But reckless migration policy can change it quickly and permanently. Just like we’ve seen in London, and Paris, and Minneapolis,” Trump wrote early Tuesday (apparently lumping international capital cities in with states). “If Kamala Harris wins this election, she will flood Pennsylvania cities and towns with illegal migrants from all over the world—and Pennsylvania will not be Pennsylvania any longer.”

“When I am president, all migrant flights to Pennsylvania will STOP the moment I take the oath of office,” he continued. “Those who do not belong, will be sent back home. We will end the invasion of small-town Pennsylvania—and we will END the destruction of America.”

It’s the second such warning that Trump has made this week, and that comes in the wake of a bewildering and baseless conspiracy contrived by Trump and his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance accusing Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating pets. Multiple city officials, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and even Vance himself have stated in no uncertain terms that the conspiracy is false, but that hasn’t stopped a deluge of bomb threats from tying up the city, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities.

In a weekend interview with Full Measure’s Sharyl Attkisson, Trump posited the idea of giving noncitizens “serial numbers” for the purposes of mass deportations, a mental image that echoes the identification numbers forcibly tattooed on concentration camp prisoners. In the same interview, Trump argued that the U.S.—which was founded by and has historically been a nation of immigrants—shouldn’t be a “dumping ground” for newcomers, and said that less U.S. media coverage of border issues and his proposed deportation programs could be a solution to allowing him to follow through on his extreme plans.

“If you take a young woman with two beautiful children, and you put her on a bus, and it ends up on the front page of every newspaper. It makes it a lot harder,” Trump told Full Measure. “You put one wrong person onto a bus or onto an airplane, and your radical left lunatics will try and make it sound like the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

Donald Trump has spent months trying to distance his campaign from Project 2025, but some of his comments during a campaign stop in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Monday revealed that his platform is still nearly identical to the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto.

Speaking before roughly 5,000 people at the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex, Trump flatly promised to demolish the Department of Education, claiming that the federal authority was the reason for the country’s floundering education rates.

“We spend more money per pupil than any other country by far, and yet we’re at the bottom of the list,” Trump said. “Out of 40, we’re ranked about Number 40.”

“And I’m going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states,” he continued. “And we’re going to do it fast.”

The United States actually ranks twenty-second out of 41 countries, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Better Life Index.

The Republican presidential nominee then continued to compare individual states to countries that consistently place high on international education rankings, such as Denmark or Norway, which use national socialist structures to fund their public schools. For Trump, those states include Idaho and Iowa—but not California, where Trump believes Governor “Gavin Newscum” would interfere with localized education systems.

“We’re going to have 35 like, different ones—Iowa will do good. A lot of the states will do very good. I can think of probably 30, 35 will be do—five will be OK, 10 will be OK. You’ll have four or five that will be terrible, but that’s OK, we have to control it,” Trump said. “But you’ll have, you’ll have Idaho, you’ll have Idaho will do a great job, no debt; they run a great state.”

Project 2025 has advanced seemingly outrageous policy positions, including dismantling, wholesale, staples of the executive branch such as the Department of Education. It also proposes revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

On July 5, Trump claimed that he “knew nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”

“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Representative Lindsey Graham flailed while trying to help Donald Trump distance himself from North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.

Within 24 hours of the bombshell report last week alleging Robinson had left inflammatory and explicit comments on a pornography website’s message board, the Democratic National Committee launched a series of digital and billboard ads linking Trump to the North Carolina lieutenant governor.

Graham appeared on Fox News Monday night to try to separate the two and to bail out Trump’s slowly sinking campaign in the Tar Heel State.

“That’s literally their campaign in North Carolina, is trying to make people believe that Donald Trump somehow is involved with Mar—uh with the Robinson guy,” Graham said. He stumbled slightly, appearing to avoid saying Robinson’s first name.

“Donald Trump knew nothing about this. I knew nothing about it. They’re trying to guilt by association,” Graham whined. “If you’re Republican, you own Mark Robinson.”

Later, Graham tried to shame Democrats for going so low as to link Trump to a candidate he has openly endorsed and fawned over for more than a year. (In June 2023, Trump called Robinson “one of the great stars of the party, one of the great stars in politics.”)

“This is really a hit job, it’s unconscionable. And if we did this to them, it would be blowing up the entire mainstream media,” Graham said.

Unfortunately for Graham, Trump’s statements about Robinson are well documented, and that’s exactly what the advertisements are about. The billboard design will feature a photograph of Trump and Robinson standing together, with comments the former president has made about Robinson, according to NBC News.

The former president called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids” during a rally they both attended in Greensboro, North Carolina, in March—a particularly strange comment made even weirder by the fact that Robinson has allegedly called himself a “black NAZI.” During a rally as recently as August, Trump said that Robinson was “a very good man.” Trump has also called Robinson “outstanding” and an “incredible gentleman,” and said things like, “We have to cherish Mark.”

Now it seems that Graham, and by extension Trump, wants to sweep their whole relationship under the rug—but the Democrats aren’t willing to let anyone forget. Meanwhile, Robinson’s staffers are ditching him left and right, and Robinson, who has maintained that he is innocent, is strangely turning down offers from I.T. specialists to help him exonerate himself.

One of the architects of Project 2025, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, apparently killed a neighborhood dog with a shovel because its loud barking was bothering his family.

The Guardian reports that about two decades ago, Roberts was a history professor at New Mexico State University, and told his colleagues and dinner guests that he killed a pit bull belonging to one of his neighbors in 2004.

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was chair of the university’s history department at the time.

Two other people who attended a dinner at Roberts’s home, a professor and her spouse, remember hearing a similar story, and three other professors told The Guardian that they remember hearing it from colleagues who heard it from Roberts. All of these people said they didn’t remember Roberts ever saying that the dog was directly threatening him or his family.

Roberts denied killing a dog with a shovel in a statement to the publication, and didn’t respond to questions as to why people said that he had.

“This is a patently untrue and baseless story backed by zero evidence. In 2004, a neighbor’s chained pit bull attempted to jump a fence into my backyard as I was gardening with my young daughter,” Roberts said. “Thankfully, the owner arrived in time to restrain the animal before it could get loose and attack us.”

At the time, the people who heard the story didn’t ask Roberts for any details, finding the story disturbing.

“I think that probably people were not eager to engage with him over this. It sounded like a pretty crazy thing to do and people didn’t want to get into it at that point,” Hammond said.

As the president of the Heritage Foundation, a giant in the conservative world, Roberts has been a major figure behind the Project 2025 manifesto, which provides a right-wing blueprint for a future Republican president. The project has become very unpopular, thanks to its recommended restrictions on the LGBTQ community, reproductive rights, and other conservative policy priorities.

Trump has tried in vain to distance himself from the project but has been unsuccessful thanks to the extensive ties between himself and the Heritage Foundation, especially Roberts. This canine revelation isn’t the first time something damaging has come about the foundation’s president: A disturbing book written by Roberts, Dawn’s Early Light, was delayed because of how bad it could be for Trump, particularly since his running mate, J.D. Vance, wrote its foreword. Roberts was also a member of Opus Dei, a secretive, ultraconservative Catholic organization.

Roberts is scheduled to speak at the New York Times Climate Forward event on Wednesday, where it’s possible that he’ll face questions about his thoughts on loud dogs in addition to Project 2025’s ideas on weakening environmental laws. Trump and Vance hope that their presidential campaign won’t come up.

Donald Trump has a new promise for America’s women. It’s not safeguarding against extreme abortion and reproductive health restrictions but instead a creepy, vague vow to be their “protector.”

“I am your protector, I want to be your protector. As president I have to be your protector,” Trump declared at a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, speaking to women voters on Monday. “I hope you don’t make too much of it,” he added, after perhaps hearing how strange he sounded.

There is a large gender divide in the polls, with Harris leading women voters by a net 21 percentage points, according to an NBC poll released Sunday. Still, Trump pushed back against claims from the “fake news media” that he has an issue getting half of the population to like him. “I always thought women liked me, I never thought I had a problem,” Trump said, as he promised to assure women they would “no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared” and urged them not to worry about abortion rights.

On Saturday, in a post on Truth Social, the former president and convicted rapist posted a similar sentiment. “WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE! YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”

Women, themselves, were less impressed.

“Seeing that line ‘I am your protector’ makes me think about the fact that he was found liable for sexual assault,” said Alecia Johnson, senior adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign, on CNN. “The tone was very patronizing to women, and I think there are a lot of women who will see right through it.”

Others on X echoed her sentiment.

It’s no surprise that the man who has dozens of sexual harassment allegations against him, and who called the #MeToo movement “a very scary time for young men in America,” can’t read the room.

Donald Trump pledged to unleash federal law enforcement on “failing” U.S. cities, after promising to end all sanctuary cities in a state where there actually are none.

During a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Sunday, Trump promised to invade American cities with federal forces.

“Today I am announcing a new plan to end all sanctuary cities in North Carolina, and all across our country,” said Trump. “No more sanctuary cities.”

“As soon as I take office, we will immediately surge federal law enforcement to every city that is failing, which is a lot of them,” he continued. “To turn over criminal aliens, and we will hunt down, capture every single gang member, drug dealer, rapist, murderer, and migrant criminal that is being illegally harbored.

“I will ask Congress to pass a law outlawing sanctuary cities nationwide, and we demand the full weight of the federal government on any jurisdiction that refuses to cooperate with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” Trump added.

In sanctuary cities, there are policies in place that limit coordination and information sharing with federal immigration authorities about noncitizens. This allows noncitizens to be able to report crimes, acquire homes and jobs, and participate in society without fear of being deported.

ICE officials are still able to arrest undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities, and if undocumented immigrants commit crimes, they are processed by local law enforcement similarly to how anyone else would be.

Trump has repeatedly and vastly overstated the threat of sanctuary cities. Case in point: North Carolina doesn’t have any sanctuary cities for Trump to get rid of, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative, anti-immigrant think tank. There are a few county-level institutions that have been deemed noncooperative with ICE, but no actual cities.

Trump has previously vowed to militarize U.S. law enforcement to “restore law and order to our cities,” which he claimed have become “cesspools of bloodshed and crime” under President Joe Biden. Trump has argued that additional federal funding and forces would help supplement supposedly defunded police departments—but that the extra help would only go to cities that complied with ICE.

Project 2025 would see Trump take over sanctuary cities and rebuild them to his liking by withholding FEMA funding from states and cities that refuse to cooperate with federal law and immigration enforcement.

Trump’s promise to end sanctuary cities is made even more chilling by his plan to round up and mass-deport noncitizens based on their “serial numbers.”