Wednesday's postcard, and the Year of the Cat
September 25, 2024
Tilted sandstone of the Hoh accretionary wedge, Beach #4, Olympic National Park
“If I have to create stories so the American media actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”—Trump vice-presidential running mate JD Vance, September 15th.
In a more perfect world, what Nathan Clark has to say would matter more than what Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have to say.
In case you missed his moment, Nathan Clark has endured a father’s nightmare—his young son, Aiden, was killed when a Haitian immigrant, driving a minivan, collided with a school bus in which the 11-year-old was a passenger. The year-old tragedy re-surfaced earlier this month when it was weaponized by JD Vance—the Ohio senator whom Trump has chosen to be his vice presidential running mate. The day before Trump was to debate Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Vance took to social media to pin blame for Aiden’s death on the sitting vice president, for failing to stop Hermanio Joseph, the 36 year-old Haitian emigre who drove the minivan, from entering the country. The following day—the day of the debate—Vance posted that “a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here.”
This is scurrilous.
It is true that Joseph is Haitian—one of thousands of Haitians who’ve largely been welcomed to the southern Ohio city as it tries to recover from the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization. But the core of Vance’s incendiary accusations was and is false. It wasn’t true that young Aiden was murdered—a judge found Joseph guilty of felony, involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to a decade of prison time. Nor was it true that Joseph was in Springfield illegally. Nor was it true—as Vance poured even more gasoline on his fire—that the immigrant Haitians had absconded with their Springfield neighbors’ dogs and cats, to eat them.
Nathan Clark didn’t hesitate when he heard that Vance was using his son’s death to score political points. On Tuesday, September 10th, the day of the debate, he went to a meeting of the Springfield city commission and said this:
“This needs to stop now. They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies.”
Apologies were not forthcoming.
Instead, and as most of you know, things only got worse from there. That same evening, in his nationally televised debate with Harris, Trump doubled-down on Vance’s shameless lie.
“In Springfield, 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. And this is what’s happening in this country.”
As is often the case, printed words are inadequate to convey the umbrage Trump expresses when he sets fire to the truth, so here’s the video clip.
There is humor in this, but only the darkest kind. Trump was fact-checked in real time by ABC’s David Muir which, of course, was quickly recast by team Trump as the mainstream media being unfair to him. But it helped neither Trump nor Vance that three reporters from the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal investigated and then reported—not only debunking the lie but reporting that it was broadcast by both Vance and Trump in the face of assurances from Springfield’s city manager that it was baseless. In short order, it became national news that Miss Sassy, the domestic shorthair cat whose disappearance was a source-point for the bogus story, was found in her owner’s basement, and then photographed in a camp chair.
What wasn’t so funny is the deluge of threats (including several bomb scares that led to the closure of schools, government offices and even grocery stores) in the wake of Vance and Trump’s lies. This led to another fact-check, and a plea, this time by Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine, who was born in Springfield.
“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine wrote in a guest essay published in the New York Times last Friday. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who’ve spent their lives there.”
—To continue reading, please subscribe to The Daily Rhubarb at the link below… tjc
