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This story has been making news for days with the local mayor putting blame on President Trump and JD Vance for dozens of bomb threats which shut down schools in Springfield, Ohio. Trump was asked about it and said he didn’t know anything about it.
The national media has been covering this the same way. Here’s an NBC News report from two days ago.
Springfield is a town on edge. It’s been five days since it was thrust into the national spotlight by baseless — and to many, racist — rumors of Haitian residents killing and eating wildlife and pets, and its economic comeback has been dramatically overshadowed by tensions that once rarely reached beyond city council meetings. The city has been forced to close schools, City Hall and other municipal buildings because of bomb threats and safety fears tied to the rumors, and Haitian immigrants are afraid to leave their homes because of anger directed at them.
On Saturday, nearby Wittenberg University canceled all on-campus activities for the following day after receiving a threat of a potential shooting targeting the Haitian community.
Mayor Rob Rue says the city of nearly 59,000 is being “torn apart” by hate and vitriol.
Personally, I thought the claims about people eating dogs and cats was an own goal. The memes were funny but JD Vance has already admitted this could be seen as a fake but accurate argument to focus media attention on mass immigration, what the left would call «consciousness raising.»
The left makes those sorts of arguments all the time and I usually give them hell for it so I’m not inclined to give this one a pass just because I agree that the impact of migrants on US towns has largely been ignored by the national media.
Putting that aside, there’s another issue here that definitely deserves attention. The media loves to play the climate of hate game with Republican rhetoric. If any act of violence or any threat can be tied to GOP rhetoric, they run with it. The lie connecting Sarah Palin to the Tucson shooting is just one of the best known examples but the left/media has done this sort of thing many times.
But as we’ve seen this week, when acts of violence implicate left-wing rhetoric, their standard suddenly changes.
