Springfield, Ohio, Mayor Rob Rue is setting the record straight after his town’s city hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat.
Rue spoke with CNN’s Laura Coates Thursday night to hit back at the outlandish claims that Haitian immigrants had begun eating their neighbors’ pets. He asserted that while it had been “difficult” to adjust to the influx of new residents, the city was certainly not “imploding” on itself.
“Unfortunately, right now we have to focus on making sure this rhetoric is dispelled, that these rumors are just—they’re just not true. You know, Springfield is a beautiful place and your pets are safe in Springfield,” Rue said, laughing slightly at how insane it all sounded.
Coates played a clip of Donald Trump giving a speech in Arizona earlier Thursday, during which the former president claimed that Haitian immigrants had descended upon Springfield, “destroying their entire way of life.” Trump again claimed that migrants were snatching geese from local parks and “even walking off with their pets.”
Coates sighed, exasperated, while Rue shook his head. “If you could speak to the former president what would you tell him?” Coates asked.
“We need help, not hate,” Rue repeated. He criticized lawmakers who carelessly cast the city of Springfield in a negative light.
“We have a beautiful city, and we need, we need the national stage to pay attention to what their words are doing to cities like ours,” Rue added. “We don’t need this pushback that is hurting our citizens and hurting our community—I would say that to anybody who would take a mic and say those things.”
