Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 37

Donald Trump and JD Vance have crossed all the lines in their war on the truth.

by Matt K. Lewis

It was a classic Kinsley gaffe, whereby politicians accidentally tell the truth. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance admitted to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that he and former President Donald Trump have been pushing false tales about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, to gin up media coverage on immigration.
Vance defended himself saying these things about a city in the state that he represents in the U.S. Senate by insisting he had a really good excuse for pushing the canard. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said.
“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,” he added, failing to mention that the false narrative was intended to advance his electoral goals.
Later, Vance sought to walk back this slip – “I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it” – but his syntax was as twisted as his value system.
Unlike Trump – who can simply turn on his “reality distortion field” and double down on patently absurd claims, hoping he can somehow manifest them – Vance still resides, at least part-time, in the reality-based world.
After more than a week of trying to kick a dog that won’t hunt, Vance finally gave up trying to make “fetch” happen. So he reverted to an “ends justify the means” excuse.
What else could he do? There is no evidence that these claims, pushed by Vance and Trump (“They’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats!”), ever happened. That’s not just my opinion. Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine says the allegations are “garbage.” The police, the city manager and the local parks department have all tried to knock down the false stories (albeit in less-colorful language).
As is often the case with such urban legends, there are germs of truth to the story. A woman in Canton, Ohio, was accused of eating a cat. But she was born in Ohio, she isn’t Haitian and she doesn’t live in Springfield, Ohio. And as for the viral picture of a migrant carrying geese? They were struck and killed during a car accident that did not take place in Springfield, according to the Ohio Division of Wildlife.
This brings us back to Vance’s tacit admission of lying – and his post-hoc justification for doing so. Let’s assume he’s right about the media ignoring a legitimate story about a town struggling to assimilate thousands of new immigrants. And let’s further assume that concocting a tall tale was the only way to get them to cover it.
Do the ends justify the means?
I am reminded of the time Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew asylum seekers from his state to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The best thing you could say about the stunt was that it (and similar actions taken by other red state governors) forced blue state leaders to grapple with the same struggles that had previously afflicted only border states and towns.
Both men were trying to make a larger point. Both men were willing to use migrants as pawns in the process. But that’s where the similarities end. The pet-eating story Vance helped propagate is baseless – and it could result in Haitian migrants being targeted for violence.
It would be quaint to say that lying is wrong, or that voters should assume that pols who are willing to lie for you will lie to you. But what Trump and Vance did here transcends mere prevarication. A more specific charge would be a violation of the ninth commandment to not bear false witness against a neighbor.
After all, if you mention that a politician is guilty of lying, you’re likely to get a sarcastic retort akin to the famous line from “Casablanca” about Rick’s Café: “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here!”
But it’s one thing for a pol to lie about his resume or voting record. It’s another thing entirely to lie about innocent, vulnerable people whose lives might now be at risk. What kind of person would be willing to do that?
Does it matter to Vance that amplifying a lie has led to numerous bomb scares and threats against Haitians that have closed schools, hospitals, businesses and city hall in Springfield, Ohio? Does it matter to Vance if the canard divides Americans, plays on racist tropes, stokes fear and erodes trust in leaders and institutions?
To some degree, the question about the ends justifying the means depends on whether you see the election as tantamount to war.
In a real war, enemies engage in deception often without worrying about niceties like ethics. In a life-or-death struggle, even the white hats lie with impunity. Aside from lying, they also do a lot of other distasteful things, including sometimes breaching the Geneva Conventions or committing war crimes, transgressions that are prosecuted and punished in just societies.
Make no mistake, that is how Trump, Vance and their most adamant supporters see our current political paradigm: as a war.
Whether the Haitian community constitutes the “enemy” in this analogy – or merely acceptable collateral damage in this culture war – hardly matters.
In the MAGA culture war, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. What’s notable this time is that Vance just confessed to breaking them on live TV.
Matt Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the “Party of Trump”.
Courtesy by US News