Morning Briefing: The Fallout of Trump’s False Claims

Briefing|Morning Briefing: The Fallout of Trump’s False Claims

How false stories became central to Trump’s campaign

After Donald Trump’s untrue claim during last week’s debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating pets, the town that has been dragged into national conversation remains uneasy. Two of its hospitals went into lockdown this weekend, and bomb threats closed schools, businesses and City Hall earlier in the week.

Yesterday, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, said that he stood by the debunked claims, and that he was willing “to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention.”

The increasingly hostile language from Trump, other politicians and some extremist organizations has shaken some of the thousands of Haitians who have settled in Springfield. Some have considered moving to bigger cities.

But there’s another town central to Trump’s anti-immigration narrative: Aurora, Colo. The mayor’s false claims that the town was overrun by a violent Venezuelan street gang became a focus of the right-wing media and Trump’s campaign. Now, the mayor says he is trying to undo the damage as Trump’s words stoke fears in his community.

Your questions:

We’re asking readers what they’d like to know about the election and taking those questions to our reporters. Today, we gave one to Shane Goldmacher, who covers U.S. politics and the election.

Have the many millions of dollars spent on election campaigns got out of hand? And should it be limited by law? — Anthony Rhodes, Dover, Britain

Shane: The amount of money in American campaigns keeps spiraling upward year after year — and there is no end in sight. What’s interesting is that the spending is being driven by both mega contributors and a deluge of small donors. In the first three days that Vice President Kamala Harris was a candidate for president, for instance, mostly small contributors gave $173 million through the online donation portal ActBlue to Democratic causes and candidates.

There is not really any chance to curb this explosion of political money and spending, barring a constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court has broadly determined that money amounts to free speech and must be protected, and has steadily eroded limits that Congress had previously put in place.