Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance’s insistence on perpetuating lies about migrants in Ohio has continued despite all evidence to the contrary. As the Republican pair makes their own calls for Democrats to tone down their rhetoric, CNN’s Jake Tapper said Wednesday, “It’s really, frankly, quite a sight to behold.”
Even if the left has, at times, used language against the former president that has “gone too far,” that does nothing to erase “eight years of dehumanizing and incendiary and, yes, violent rhetoric from Mr. Trump,” he explained. “That’s not how the space-time continuum works.”
Tapper’s segment was in response to “the thankfully unsuccessful” second assassination attempt made against Trump, this time in Florida. “[But] at the same time that they’re doing that, Trump and Vance and their minions continue to spread lies about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio,” he noted.
The host then launched into an 8-minute takedown of each of the lies perpetuated by Trump and Vance — even as the pair’s campaign knew that the debunked falsehoods about migrants in Ohio were made up. In a piece published Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Springfield city manager Bryan Heck told the outlet that when speaking to a member of Vance’s staff, he said “there was no verifiable evidence or reports” to support the rumors, adding, “I told them these claims were baseless.”
In the weeks since the rumors began, both Trump and Vance have continued to push the racist allegations. At the same time, hospitals and schools in Springfield have been evacuated due to bomb and shooting threats, and residents are fearing for their safety. Unfortunately, when fellow Republicans have asked the pair to put an end to the lies, Trump and Vance have “expressed frankly indifference and a little bit of indignance,” as Tapper put it.
“So they continue to push these falsehoods about the migrants. At the same time, they demand that Democrats curb their rhetoric. It’s really, frankly, quite a sight to behold,” Tapper continued. He then played footage of Vance saying, “Don’t lecture Donald Trump about softening his rhetoric after two people tried to kill him. Tell Kamala Harris, tell Joe Biden, tell all of her surrogates who are saying things like, ‘Donald Trump needs to be eliminated.’”
After he noted that Vance appeared to find the word “eliminated” troubling, Tapper played several reels of footage in which Trump encouraged attendees at a campaign event to “knock the crap out of” a protestor; in another clip, he referred to his fellow Americans as “vermin.”
In 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz said that the Trump campaign was one that “affirmatively encourages violence,” Tapper added before he pointed out other instances in which Trump appeared to do exactly that: such as when he gave out what he said was President Barack Obama’s address and a man was arrested after he was spotted driving a van full of weapons in the neighborhood.
The same man — Taylor Taranto – was also named in a wrongful death lawsuit that alleged his actions, in part, contributed to the 2021 death of Washington, D.C. police officer Jeff Smith, who died by suicide following the attacks on the Capitol on Jan. 6 of that year.
You can watch the entire segment from Jake Tapper in the video, above.