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Over the last month or so, when Donald Trump has been asked about his racist conspiracy theories regarding Springfield, Ohio, the former Republican president tends to reiterate the lies and express general indifference to the consequences.
When the GOP candidate appeared at a Univision town hall in Miami, however, Trump realized that his usual nonsense wouldn’t quite work: He’d be speaking to a pro-immigration audience, in a city with a sizable Haitian-American population.
With this in mind, when someone in the audience brought up Springfield, the Republican nominee said something qualitatively different from his usual talking points. NBC News reported:
At a Univision town hall in Miami, Trump defended his comments about Haitian immigrants’ eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, telling voters he was “just reading people’s reporting.” His comment was in response to a question from an undecided GOP voter about whether Trump actually believed the conspiracy theory he spread about Springfield’s immigrant community.
“This was just reported,” Trump said. “I was just saying what was reported, that’s been reported. ... All I do is report.”
In other words, the former president wanted the Univision audience to believe he wasn’t responsible for what he said. Trump, we're supposed to believe, is little more than a humble conduit for information.
There are a few glaring problems with this.
The first is what Trump actually said: The Republican nominee stood on a debate stage and told a national television audience, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country.”
There were no caveats. He didn’t preface his comments by saying, “Rumor has it” or “I’ve seen reports that suggest.” The former president simply asserted that racist lies were factual. For him to pretend more than a month later that he wasn’t responsible for peddling this garbage is ridiculous.
Second, I can’t help but wonder if the Republican would be comfortable with Kamala Harris playing by the same set of rules. If the Democratic vice president found a fringe website that made outlandish claims about Trump, could Harris bring those lies to the public and say, “I just repeat what was reported”?
But just as notable is the larger, underappreciated pattern.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump was speaking in Ohio when a man rushed the stage, prompting Secret Service agents to intervene. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the incident proved inconsequential.
But the then-candidate insisted at the time that the man in question had ties to ISIS, pointing to online evidence that turned out to be false. As longtime readers might recall, NBC News’ Chuck Todd asked the Republican about his willingness to substantiate odd claims with bogus evidence.
“What do I know about it?” Trump replied. “All I know is what’s on the internet.”
Four years later — exactly four years ago this week, in fact — the then-president participated in a town hall on NBC News. In the runup to the event, Trump promoted a series of bizarre ideas about Osama bin Laden and SEAL Team 6, which in turn sparked some aggressive pushback.
At the town hall, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked for some kind of explanation, and Trump said he didn’t know anything about the conspiracy theory that he’d brought to the public.
“That was an opinion of somebody,” the then-president said, adding, “I’ll put it out there.”
It fell to Guthrie to remind the incumbent leader of the free world, “You’re the president. You’re not someone’s crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.”
Almost exactly four years to the day later, he’s still acting like someone’s crazy uncle, peddling nonsense without regard for accuracy, decency, or consequences.
It’s a timely reminder that Trump has a child-like approach to reality: It starts when he sees something ridiculous. The Republican then decides he wants the ridiculous thing to be true. Soon after, the former president decides the ridiculous thing must be true.
And at the point, Trump urges the public to believe the ridiculous thing, telling Americans it is true, even when it's not.
Adults with critical thinking skills tend not to say things such as, “All I know is what’s on the internet.” The GOP nominee for the nation’s highest office, however, is still lacking in this area.