'Charged with hate and rage': Columnist points out what Ohio gov misses in attacking Trump

21 September 2024

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine delicately criticized former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) over their attacks on the Haitian migrant community in Springfield, Ohio. But one columnist is arguing that DeWine's essay misses the whole point of the Republican ticket's "demagoguery."

The New Republic's Greg Sargent called DeWine's op-ed "remarkable" in that it was a rare occurrence of a sitting governor criticizing his own party's presidential and vice presidential nominees less than two months before an election. But he called the two-term Buckeye State governor's underlying argument "quaint" in that it assumes Trump and Vance will backtrack on their rhetoric once it proves to be politically costly.

"Trump actively wants the argument over immigration to be as charged with hate and rage as possible. He doesn’t think that will alienate swing voters. He thinks it will activate their latent MAGA tendencies," Sargent wrote. "The picture Trump is seizing on Springfield to invoke — that of a largely white, innocent heartland town getting ravaged by dark, alien hordes who basically constitute a subhuman species — simply cannot be a distraction from the immigration debate. To Trump, it is the immigration debate."

DeWine described Springfield as an idyllic Ohio community in which both native-born residents, business owners and hardworking, law-abiding and legal immigrants are both self-actualizing safely. And be bemoaned the fact that the wave of bomb threats called into city buildings and local schools following Trump and Vance spreading debunked rumors about Haitian refugees is causing panic among residents.

"I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield," the two-term Ohio governor wrote. "This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there."

But Sargent made a case that the inflamed tensions in Springfield is the entire point of the GOP ticket's caustic rhetoric. He noted that while Vance's attacks on immigrants are less "explicit" in their intensity, the former president has all but abandoned nuance.

"Trump says that migrants are 'poisoning the blood of our country,' that we should not let in people from 's—hole countries' like Haiti, and that other countries are sending millions of people 'from prisons, from insane asylums, from mental institutions.' Those and other statements constitute quasi-open declarations that the problem with immigration is racial contamination. They drain migrants of any trace of basic humanity that might make claims on our sense of justice," Sargent wrote. "When Trump says Haitians are 'eating the dogs' and 'eating the cats,' it’s more of that dehumanization game."

The fact that there is no actual evidence to back up Trump and Vance's claims about Haitians kidnapping and eating pets in Ohio is secondary to them, according to Sargent. When CNN host Dana Bash confronted the Ohio senator about local officials debunking his rumor, Vance admitted that his singular goal was "creating stories" about immigrants in order to cement a certain narrative in the media.

"[F]or Trump, the argument over Springfield has nothing to do with what’s actually happening in Springfield. It’s about fomenting violent national hatreds in order to seize power," he argued. "What must be asked of Vance is why this gives him no discernible qualms whatsoever. He knows what Trump is up to perfectly well—and he’s absolutely willing to go along with every bit of it."

Click here to read Sargent's column in its entirety.

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