Brutal in its simplicity:
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City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield.
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He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck.
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I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning.
That night, former President
Donald Trump stood on a Philadelphia debate stage and shot the rumor into the stratosphere.
… It was the culmination of a spectacular collision of forces that thrust Springfield into the heart of the U.S. presidential election.
Over the summer, outside neo-Nazi groups—which specialize in exploiting local controversy to foment outrage about migrants—had seized on a local controversy and fanned the narrative of pet-eating Haitians.
Then the Trump campaign blasted those rumors to the world—and kept pushing them even after they were exposed as lies. The Trump campaign continues to run hard at the controversy. Trump last Friday said he planned “large deportations” from Springfield—whose Haitian community is overwhelmingly in the country legally.
Trump campaign surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy plans to host a town hall in Springfield this Thursday. Vance said on Tuesday that Trump would like to visit Springfield, too, at some point.
Attempts to contain the damage in Springfield were quickly overwhelmed despite city leaders’ racing from meeting to meeting trying to stem the tide.
The Ohio state police were called in to protect local children as they returned to school. A security tower with cameras was erected outside City Hall. Thirty-six bomb threats had been logged as of Tuesday evening. …”