Springfield Ohio is a tragically sad example of how an evil lie travels around the world "before truth gets its boots on"

Echo opinion with chilling imagry published in the Albany Herald, a Georgia newspaper, by Gene Lyons:

The formal term for what the *Trump Cult* has visited upon the Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, is "blood libel." 

Trump campaign's newest evil nonsense constitutes a blood libel

Although foreigners and outsiders have doubtless been blamed for everything from droughts and floods to outbreaks of disease throughout human history, conspiracists have traditionally blamed Jews.

Historians generally trace the *evil👿👺💀* term to the year 1144 in Norwich, England, when the corpse of a 12-year-old child was found. As part of a campaign to establish the dead boy as a martyr and the church where he was buried as a (profitable) pilgrimage site, an enterprising monk wrote a series of tracts blaming local Jews for his ritual murder.

And so it has gone for centuries: a totally imaginary slander kept alive by bigots and crackpots from Russia to Southern California.

"You are not forgotten, Simon of Trent," wrote a gunman who shot up a synagogue near San Diego in 2019, referencing a slain toddler allegedly martyred in 1475.  Medievil horror❗

🏰🗡️⚔️⚔🐴🗡🛡⚜🏹👑🐲🤺🛡️💢👹

"The horror that you and countless children have endured at the hands of the Jews will never be forgiven."

Events in Ohio demonstrate that anti-Semitism is far from the only form of racist scapegoating in America today. 

The Trump Cult has gone downright medieval on undocumented immigrants. Donald Trump himself calls them "vermin" 🐍who are "poisoning the blood" of (white) Americans. 

During his catastrophically bad debate with Kamala Harris, the former president charged Haitian immigrants in Springfield with unspeakable crimes.

"In Springfield, they are eating the dogs," Trump said as the split screen broadcast showed Harris looking on incredulously. "They're eating the cats," Trump continued, repeating an internet conspiracy theory that local police call totally unsubstantiated. They attribute the rumors to a Facebook post citing its source as a "neighbor's daughter's friend."

The author has herself admitted that she has no idea if it's true, and regrets posting it online.

Challenged by debate moderator David Muir, Trump doubled down. "But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there."

Would it shock you to learn that no such firsthand accounts exist? Not even on Fox  (Fake❗)News, presumably because nobody in Ohio can be found who's willing to endorse so crazy a story even for the sake of the orange messiah. It would turn their lives upside down.

For most Americans, kidnapping and cooking a family pet would be a more shocking crime than, well, pretty much anything I can imagine. That's what makes it a blood libel: a false accusation that seeks to render its targets subhuman. Beneath contempt.

It follows that anybody who would endorse it deserves nothing but scorn. For all the predictable whining of his supporters about how terribly unfair it was of ABC moderators to correct this grotesque lie, the simple truth is that Trump hurt himself.

"You stupid mf'ers just got Trump to repeat your lie about the pets," right-wing talk radio host Erick Erickson wrote on X. "Congrats on setting the news stories tomorrow by lying so Trump picks it up."

Yeah, well, nobody made him do it. The combination of Trump's own ignorance, credulousness and bigotry caused him serious political harm.

So, it's only fitting that the worst vice presidential candidate in recent American history, J.D. Vance, not only  doubled down on the libel, but went on national TV and bragged about it❗

Seriously, what is wrong with J.D. Vance? The reason he endorsed the anti-Haitian scare stories, he said, wasn't that they are true, he admitted to CNN's Dana Bash, but to correct news media bias.

"If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people," Vance said, "then that's what I'm going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast."

Incredulously, the normally unflappable Bash emphasized that Vance had just admitted the whole pet-eating business was a 🤥 made-up story. (IOW- lies❗)

The candidate - Marine Corporal Vance.... didn't deny it.

"I say that we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it," he insisted.

Meanwhile, the kinds of MAGA cranks who appear to see Trump as semi-divine and incapable of error sprang into action. The small city of Springfield was besieged by bomb threats and warnings of impending violence that led to school, hospital and university closings. Predictions of mayhem caused panic among the Haitian community.

They are legal immigrants actively recruited to the community to fill factory jobs that had gone begging, as local authorities, business leaders and Ohio's Republican Gov. Mike DeWine emphasized. 

It's all nonsense, a classic blood libel blaming the Haitians for the panic some benighted Ohioans feel at their black faces and Creole-accented voices. To Trumpers, poor deluded fools, that makes them frightening and evil.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000).

Donald Trump owns the end of Roe V Wade is responsible for preventable deaths caused by his cruelty

Echo Letter to the Editor of the Albany Herald in Albany Georgia:

Trump's Abortion Ban❗😡

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Trump's actions make him guilty of murder By Joe DeMarco news@albanyherald.com
Updated Sep 23, 2024

Donald Trump said, "For 54 years they were trying to get Roe V. Wade terminated, and I did it and I am proud to have done it."

Two women recently lost their lives after they couldn't get legal abortions,. One of the women was bleeding in a parking lot.

All this because Trump thought he was being a hero by getting Roe V. Wade nullified. In my opinion, Donald Trump is guilty of murder.

Kamala Harris has vowed to reinstate Roe V. Wade when she is elected president. That is why I am voting for Kamala Harris.

Joe DeMarco in Jay, N.Y.

Joe DeMarco is a World War II veteran.

No President is above the law ~ Cokie and Steve Roberts echo opinion

Steve and Cokie Roberts call out GOP ~ the silent Republicans, an echo opinion published in the Albany Herald, a Georgia newspaper

OPINION: Trump tries to discredit agencies that hold him accountable ~ By Steve & Cokie Roberts
Donald Trump has declared war on those institutions specifically designed to hold him accountable, legally and politically. 

As a result, this is a deeply dangerous time for American democracy.

Republicans Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) and Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) - picture right, stand alone in calling on Trump to be accountable for failed leadership: Donald Trump surrogates are feeding wrong minded populism

The genius of that democracy can be summed up in three words: checks and balances. The founders feared an unfettered president, and designed a complex system of obstacles to limit executive power. Vetoes can be over-ridden by Congress; regulations can be blocked by federal courts. Presidential actions of all kinds can be investigated by legislative committees, independent journalists and law enforcement agents.

The ultimate barrier against presidential power, of course, is impeachment, but that’s a drastic and inefficient remedy. In most cases, the national interest depends on routine and robust enforcement of one simple principle: that no president is above the law.

That enforcement, however, depends on vital and vigorous institutions capable of standing up to a power-hungry president. And that’s exactly why this president has made such a determined effort to undermine the credibility of those institutions.

His target list ranges from his own intelligence agencies — he called their report documenting Russian meddling in the 2016 election a “tremendous blot on their record” — to his vanquished opponent in that election, Hillary Clinton. Even now, he insists on calling her “Crooked Hillary” and relishes chants of “lock her up” from his most ardent supporters.

Instead, Trump focuses mainly on discrediting the two institutions that pose the greatest threat to his untrammeled power: law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the special counsel, Robert Mueller; and a free and fearless press. He’s aided and abetted by spineless GOP leaders who refuse to criticize his assaults.

Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, liberated by his decision to leave Congress, harshly denounced his fellow Republicans on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “When the president says things that are just totally wrong, it’s the responsibility of members of Congress, particularly those in the president’s party, to stand up and say, ‘That is not right. Truth is not relative. And there are no alternative facts here.’ … I have seen instances where we haven’t done that well. And we’ve got to do it better.”

Donald Trump's "Operation Obfuscation" begins with the media. 

Trump repeatedly called reporters “dishonest,” “corrupt” and “the enemy of the American people,” precisely because they refuse to buckle under his pressure. Just one example: The Washington Post documented that in his first 466 days in office, Trump made 3,001 “false or misleading claims” — an average of 6.5 per day.

Lesley Stahl, the veteran CBS reporter, recently recounted a conversation in which she asked Trump why he incessantly attacked the press. His revealing answer: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

Trump’s attacks on law enforcement agencies have the same strategic purpose, to discredit and demean investigators and prosecutors and erode their ability to curb his abuses. His latest disinformation campaign is what he and his allies like to call “Spygate,” the completely unfounded charge that the FBI, under President Obama, planted a spy in the Trump campaign.

In fact, the Feds used an informant, a retired professor, to gather evidence of possible connections between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Former CIA director Michael Hayden called the procedure “stunningly normal” on ABC’s “This Week.” But “normal” has little meaning for this president, who insisted on tweeting that the story, “if true,” amounted to the “all time biggest political scandal.”

The president is “simply trying to delegitimize the Mueller investigation … and he’s willing to throw almost anything against the wall,” said Hayden.

Barbara McQuade, a career federal prosecutor, told The New York Times, “To turn on the FBI using this loaded language like ‘spy’ and ‘infiltrate,’ President Trump is trying to poison public opinion against the FBI for his own reasons.”

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, essentially confirmed on CNN that McQuade is right: Team Trump is trying to “poison public opinion” as a conscious and cynical strategy. “Of course we have to do it in defending the president,” he admitted. “It is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be, impeach or not impeach.”

The cost here is enormous. In defending himself and deceiving the public, Donald Trump is damaging our most basic democratic institutions. And yet, as Flake says, most Republicans bite their tongues even when the president “says things that are just totally wrong.”

Their silence is the real scandal.

Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com