Donald Trump’s racist conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants has taken root in Springfield, Ohio—but the MAGA leader doesn’t seem to care about the real-world implications of his violent rhetoric.
Fielding questions from reporters in Los Angeles on Friday, the Republican presidential nominee aggressively veered away from answering a question about a swath of school closures in Springfield that followed the proliferation of the far-right conspiracy accusing Haitian immigrants of eating their neighbors’ pets in the Midwestern city.
“No, no, no. The real threat is what’s happening at our border,” Trump said. “Because you have thousands of people being killed by illegal migrants coming in. And also dying. You have women dying as they come up, they’re coming up in large groups. We call it a caravan, I think I came up with that name but it’s really what it is—10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people—and you have large numbers of women being killed in those caravans coming up to this country.”
“And then when they get here, they can go into the country and they end up being sex slaves and everything else,” Trump continued. “Those are your real problems. Not the problem that you’re talking about.”
Trump dismisses a question about bomb threats against schools in Springfield, saying the border is "the real problem, not the problem that you're talking about" pic.twitter.com/8PTQ3UHn7n
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2024
The city at the center of the conspiracy shut down three of its schools on Friday, reported ABC News. Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary were evacuated after receiving unspecified information from the Springfield Police Division, while Roosevelt Middle School was closed from the beginning of the school day due to similar threats, reported the Springfield News-Sun.
Springfield saw even more closures on Thursday, when several other schools and a significant portion of Springfield’s government facilities—including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School—were shut down due to bomb threats.
Multiple city officials and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine have stated that the conspiracy is false. But that hasn’t stopped the Republican presidential ticket from endangering an entire town’s worth of people.
