It was roughly a month ago when Donald Trump and JD Vance started heavily promoting racist conspiracy theories about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. The dangerous consequences — bomb threats, closed buildings, canceled events, terrified residents, death threats, etc. — soon followed. What’s more, those consequences are still ongoing as the Republican Party’s presidential ticket continues to lean into their lies.
But from a purely political perspective, one of the things that made the GOP’s Springfield fiasco notable was the division within the party. In fact, while the Republicans’ message at the national level focused on imaginary pet-eating thieves from Haiti, the Republicans’ message at the local level was qualitatively different.
Springfield’s GOP mayor and Ohio’s GOP governor not only pushed back against the Trump-Vance lies, they also urged their party’s candidates to stop deceiving the public.
About a month later, a similar dynamic is unfolding in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Just as with Springfield, Trump has spent several days brazenly lying about the governmental response to the deadly storm. And just as with Springfield, the former president’s lies are causing real on-the-ground harm. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, officials have warned that the election season lies and conspiracy theories “are hindering relief efforts:”
Disaster relief organizations and lawmakers from Trump’s own party are urging people to stop spreading unsubstantiated rumors about relief efforts. The American Red Cross issued a statement disputing false claims about its response, saying such misinformation “disrupts our ability to deliver critical aid and affects the disaster workers who have put their own lives on hold to assist those in need.” FEMA even resorted to launching a misinformation page on its website to debunk rumors about its Helene response.
After Trump’s lies about Springfield were exposed, and local officials from his own party pleaded with him to be more responsible, the GOP candidate decided to keep lying anyway.
And after Trump’s lies about the Helene response were exposed, and officials — some Democrats, some Republicans, and some without any meaningful connection to politics at all — also pressed him and his conspiratorial allies to be more responsible, the former president again decided to keep lying anyway, indifferent to the dangerous consequences.
Indeed, Clarissa-Jan’s report ran on Saturday morning, the day after the GOP candidate kept up his disinformation campaign related to the hurricane relief efforts. Hours later, Trump, no doubt aware of the fact that his lies had been discredited, kept repeating the same false claims.
A day later, Trump pushed the same garbage. The day after that, he did it again. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said in a written statement, “The last thing that the victims of Helene need right now is political posturing, finger-pointing, or conspiracy theories that only hurt the response effort.” That’s true, but what Helene’s victims “need right now” is of little interest to the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. What matters to Trump with 29 days remaining before Election Day is Trump, not suffering families and communities. The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board added over the weekend, “Shame on Donald Trump for worsening [the] tragedy with political lies.” Of course, if the former president were still capable of shame, he wouldn’t be engaged in such indefensible antics in the first place.
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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