American Basket Case

Hillary Clinton famously called some Trump supporters The Deplorables. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.” While the claim may not have been politically helpful, it’s hard to argue (especially now) that such a basket exists. But there could be another even larger basket, one shamelessly exploited by Trump and Vance: The Gullibles. The WSJ (of all sources) reports (Gift Article): How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants—After Being Told They Weren’t True. “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. ‘He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?” recalled Heck. ‘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. ‘In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,’ he said to 67 million viewers. ‘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.'” (What’s really happening in this country is that they’re eating the truth.)

You knew the pet-eating story was nonsense from the beginning. I burst out laughing when Trump actually repeated the claim during the debate and muttered to myself, “That’s it. This election is over.” Whether that brief, uncharacteristic, and possibly illicit substance-aided detour into optimism proves accurate depends in part on how many Americans actually believe a laughably, repeatedly disproven, sick lie uttered by a guy who has lied more than any public figure in history. If you are still capable of being surprised, then these numbers about the pet-eating and other outlandish lies may surprised you. WaPo (Gift Article): The staggering reach of Trump’s misinformation. “A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants ‘abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.’ Excluding those who are ‘not sure,’ twice as many say it’s at least ‘probably true’ as say it’s at least ‘probably false.’ … 43 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that ‘in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth.’ … 28 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that ‘public schools are providing students with sex-change operations’ … And 81 percent of Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is ‘deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions’ to the United States.” (A falsehood likely related to the fact that Trump is mistaking political asylum for insane asylums.) I wish I could put a positive spin on how disturbing these numbers are. But I don’t even have a concept of a plan for how to do that.

So we know these lies work with a significant portion of Trump’s base. And we know they work at grabbing the headlines away from Kamala Harris. The question that will decide this election is what the undecideds and independents in the swing states think about all this nonsense. That offers little comfort to discerning voters. And it offers no comfort to the citizens of Springfield, Ohio who are paying the highest price for the sick lies. ABC: Ohio Haitian immigrants say they are afraid to leave home after recent backlash.

Scheduling Note: NextDraft will be off on Thursday and Friday.