While Donald Trump and JD Vance have spend weeks peddling a false and racist conspiracy theory about Springfield, Ohio, the state’s Republican governor has made a noticeable effort to defend reality.
Indeed, it was just a few days ago when Gov. Mike DeWine expressed dismay over the lies from his party’s presidential ticket. “Yeah, after a while, because it got cumulative, and then you keep thinking, ‘Well, they’re going to stop this,’” the GOP governor told Politico. “Well, they didn’t stop this, they just keep going.”
His frustrations apparently have not escaped the attention of his party’s national ticket. The Washington Post reported:
Donald Trump attacked Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) as ‘a Democrat liberal’ for not backing him up on the racist falsehoods about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.”
If the quote is accurate — the Post’s report has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News — it’s a fascinating peek into a bizarre perspective.
DeWine, for those unfamiliar with him, is generally seen as a conservative Republican in an increasingly red state. He was also a conservative Republican member of the U.S. House, a conservative Republican member of the U.S. Senate and a conservative Republican state attorney general.
The governor has always been a Republican, and when pressed a few weeks ago on how he intends to vote in the 2024 presidential election, DeWine told ABC News, “I said before we knew who the nominee was going to be, I would support the Republican nominee for president. I am, I am a Republican.” That was hardly a ringing endorsement of the former president. But the Ohio governor’s comments reflected just how invested he was, and is, in his party: DeWine, while acknowledging that Trump was pushing a racist lie that was tearing apart a community that he represents, said he’d support Trump’s bid for a second term anyway. But if the Post’s report is accurate, this simply isn’t good enough for the GOP’s presidential nominee. In fact, if Trump really did call DeWine “a Democrat liberal” for failing to toe the party line on Springfield, it suggests the former president isn’t just bothered by the governor favoring reality, he also believed DeWine shouldn’t even be seen as a Republican anymore for daring to betray Trump by sharing politically inconvenient facts with the public. It’s a perspective rooted in the idea that those who believe in the truth are “Democratic liberals,” while those who believe in Trump are conservative Republicans.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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