Rachel Maddow has heard enough Donald Trump and JD Vance’s smears against Haitian immigrants.
The MSNBC host dug into the racist and dangerous lie that Haitian people in Springfield are eating pets during a visit to “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” linking it directly to talking points from Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
“I think it’s helpful to note that this is a recurring racist urban legend that happens every few decades. From the late '70s through the late '80s, there were multiple instances of ‘refugees eating dogs and cats’ urban legends,” Maddow said. “It's just a racist urban legend that gets regurgitated every few years every few years whenever Klan-type groups like it.”
Maddow has spent years sounding the alarm on growing far-right influences influence within the GOP and told host Stephen Colbert that Nazi groups in Springfield were responsible for “promulgating this old urban legend about that group of immigrants in Springfield.”
“So they’re taking their cues from Nazis?” Colbert asked.
“The Trump-Vance campaign is taking their cues from a literal Nazi group that started this thing in Springfield. So that tells you all you need to know,” Maddow said, drawing boos from the live audience.
Maddow's dressing down is unlikely to move the needle for either Trump or Vance. They've stuck to the story in spite of repeated debunkings and admonitions from fellow Republicans in Ohio (including Springfield's mayor and the state's governor). Earlier this week, Vance outright admitted that he was "creating a story" to push wider anti-immigrant grievances in his base when pushed on the smears.
Watch the full clip here:
