There have been lots of outrageous, unfactual claims in recent weeks during the current presidential campaign — and yes, from both sides.
Kamala Harris claimed, without evidence, that “price gouging” on the part of grocery stores and commodities suppliers is what is causing inflation in the checkout lines. And, like politicians since time immemorial, she promises to “do something about it.” Just what that is in a free-market economy where grocers operate on slim margins and are free to set their own prices is more than a little unclear.
But there’s political grandstanding as usual — and then there’s crazy talk. And the latter is precisely what to call the truly dangerous, inane notion that Republican nominee Donald Trump promulgated last week at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes when he said he would if elected send “back to Venezuela” thousands of immigrants who came to this country from Haiti — almost all of whom entered this country at legal ports of entry and most of whom are under temporary protected status for immigrants from countries experiencing massive armed conflict.
What Haiti, a nation occupying half of an island in the Caribbean, has to do with the South American nation of Venezuela is entirely unclear, as is how such a mass deportation would be carried out.
You could chalk such talk up to ordinary exaggerations during the heat of a campaign. And if you did, you’d be being charitable in the extreme.
Because this comes as part of a barrage of entirely unfounded misinformation about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, almost all of them gainfully employed in a city formerly suffering from huge labor shortages, about whom Trump said in his debate against Harris: “they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
They are not.
Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine says there are no such credible reports. “There’s a lot of garbage on the internet,” he told ABC, “and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.”
And yet a man who would be president — and the man who would be his vice president, JD Vance — continue to repeat such bald-faced lies. “You’re never going to get this stuff perfect,” Vance says, though there is nothing at all to the stories.
In fact, the original sources of the “cat eating” story on social media had the flimsiest of evidence for their claims. According to Newsguard, one of the sources of the story told them that, “the cat owner was ‘an acquaintance of a friend’ and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from ‘a source that she had.’”
How that became a national talking point for the Trump team is incredibly bizarre and reflects terrible judgment for all parties involved.
Earth to the Trump team: Is it really too much to ask this presidential ticket to engage with real problems instead?