Second Thoughts

Like other grizzled political pros, my analysis of the Trump-Harris debate misunderestimated everyday Americans. Also, here are a few observations about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

In 1984, in the first year of our marriage, my wife and I went looking for a post-election vacation spot. French-owned Club Meds in the Caribbean were a popular destination for young couples, especially DINKs (Dual Income No Kids). Both of us were deeply entrenched in far-flung political campaigns that year, her in Wisconsin, me everywhere from New Jersey to Oregon.

This would be a welcome recovery after working 80-hour weeks amidst a competitive congressional election cycle. And wow, a Capitol Hill travel agent offered a deal: $600, all-inclusive (meals, wine, all amenities) for a week, which I recall included airfare from Washington (now Ronald Reagan) National Airport. It would be our first real vacation together. Even at today’s dollars, that’s a sweet deal. My inflation calculator tells me that translates into $1,817 in 2024. Airfare, hotels, meals, wine, entertainment, and other amenities for a week in the Caribbean just after Christmas, during peak season. Have you priced that out lately? Not in Haiti, of course.

And with the bonus of an introduction and education about one of the world’s most downtrodden and tragic people.

Less than two years after we visited Haiti, the rule of the profoundly corrupt Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier ended as he flew to France, leaving his country in turmoil. A massive earthquake in 2010 added insult to injury. Two young Christian missionaries were brutally murdered by Haitian gangs earlier this year. Club Med Haiti has been closed for decades.

You can probably guess why I’m mentioning this. Donald Trump launched a missile of sorts during his response to a question about immigration. Remember that the Biden-Harris Administration has dispatched 15,000-20,000 Haitian refugees under temporary protected status to Springfield, Ohio, a town of 51,000 residents. It’s proven more than they can handle, and the city has been begging for federal assistance for months, to no avail. Trump:

What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don't want to talk -- not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.

ABC anchor and moderator David Muir tried to fact-check Trump by citing the Springfield City manager:

DAVID MUIR: I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community --

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television

DAVID MUIR: Let me just say here this ...

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

DAVID MUIR: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

DAVID MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We'll find out.

Was David Muir suggesting that we couldn’t trust television? Enter the following morning, Ohio Attorney General David Yost.

Legacy media and Democrats on social media went nuts, not only ridiculing Trump but bending over backward to discredit the claim. Suddenly, the media may finally pay attention and investigate the story. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is dispatching the National Guard and $2.5 million to Springfield, along with this comment: "The federal government has not demonstrated that they have any kind of plan to deal with the issue." To which every town within reasonable proximity of the southern border said, “No kidding.”

As usual, there’s plenty of nuance and an overdose of tragedy. This migration has little to do with our southern border but with offering desperate refugees a place to live as their own country has descended into violent chaos. This is despite billions in aid from the US and millions from the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation since a devastating 2010 earthquake from which the Caribbean nation has never recovered. Haiti is now practically an anarchy, much of it under the control of one Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, who has consolidated armed gangs and chased out the nation’s Prime Minister, Ariel Henry. I’m afraid to ask where the “Barbeque” moniker comes from, but some suggest cannibalization.

This brouhaha has less to do with whether Haitian migrants are eating cats and geese - I hope not - But it has everything to do with the perception that our country is being overrun and undermining American culture and mores coupled with a failure or inability to assimilate migrants. Stories of brutal carjackings, rapes and murders by violent illegal immigrants are ubiquitous.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton didn’t take well to suggestions that his foundation diverted cash intended for Haitian aid and reconstruction.

Regardless, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s vision and plans to rebuild the nation with sweatshops after a horrific 2010 earthquake failed. Interestingly, the Clintons spent their honeymoon in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, flowing with an open sewer through its “Sun City” streets. They have always claimed a special connection to the impoverished nation. They reportedly attended a voodoo ceremony where a woman bit off the head of a chicken.

Voodoo and cockfighting are big things in Haiti, as I remember from our trip there 40 years ago. We joined excursions to an open-air market, a cockfighting arena, and a location for voodoo ceremonies. Sacrificing and eating animals are part of that culture, especially during those ceremonies. Who knew it might become an export, aside from Barbancourt Rum?

I mention this because the stories emanating from Springfield are believable, no matter the ridicule being heaped on Donald Trump and its residents. The ridicule in the face of what many see as credible reports only exacerbates the view that the media is gaslighting them again. Hopefully, honest reporters (Bueller? Bueller?) are on the way to investigate and report. One of them reportedly is the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito. I hope so.

I know and have worked with Haitians, all lovely and sophisticated people. And they know their country is badly broken.

A great many other Americans feel precisely the same way. This leads me to reconsider my rather hasty post following Tuesday’s presidential debate, in which I expressed disappointment with Trump’s performance and believed it changed no one’s minds.

I may be wrong. As I often am, I was guilty of wearing my campaign operative hat. I should have watched the debate in a local bar.

I know of at least two journalists who have changed their minds on who won the debate, one being Salem Media morning radio talker Hugh Hewitt. Others include PJ Media’s Matt Margolis, who said this:

However, the debate's impact may not have been as negative for Trump as initially thought. As we previously reported, a Reuters focus group of undecided voters revealed that six out of ten moved toward Trump, while only three leaned toward Harris, with one remaining unsure. Although it's a small sample, it suggests undecideds perceived the debate differently than I did. 

The New York Times also noted that while some voters saw Harris as more presidential, undecided voters were not convinced. They wanted specific plans but didn’t get them from Harris. Other focus groups of undecided voters revealed similar outcomes.

Here’s the point. Pundits, including me, with careers immersed in countless political contests and media sparring, don’t see what everyday Americans see when they watch presidential debates. Not only did Trump connect with these Americans better than people like me credit him, but given their innate sense of fairness, were repulsed by the antics and behavior of the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis.

Perhaps more convincingly, they were looking for substance they never got from the Kamala Harris, from her failure to answer questions to providing voters with a reason to trust her as the nation’s chief executive.

They know Trump. They didn’t know Harris. And they still don’t. And do not underestimate Trump’s ability to connect with Americans who feel like they’ve been left behind.

Also, voters will always go with the devil they know over the one they don’t, compounded by her Biden-style basement campaign devoid of interactions with serious, fair journalists and actual voters in an authentic way. This, and persuadable voters’ innate distrust of our media, made them perceive Trump more sympathetically than hardened pundits like me.

Minds are usually made not during the debates themselves, but the perceptions of them aired and published afterward—the echo chamber. And the echo chamber didn’t play out quite the way I thought. While much of the vitriol was rightly directed at the partisan moderators, voters and even most pundits felt Harris failed to persuade voters of her gravitas for the presidency. Trump may have turned them off, but Harris left them empty-handed. The Harris partisans were surprisingly muted in their reactions to what many of us thought was a win on her part.

The moderators also failed to ask basic questions on the minds of voters while dealing with issues most Americans don’t prioritize, from “climate change” to abortion. No questions on the killing of American-Israeli hostage by Hamas. No questions about Iran. No questions about China, especially the fentanyl crisis that’s killing 100,000 or more Americans annually.

Oops, ABC is owned by Disney has several properties there.

Few serious questions on issues Americans care about. Harris’s grating antics on camera while Trump was speaking were disrespectful and arrogant and a turn-off to many viewers.

I couldn’t figure out what all the AI memes like this were about on X (formerly Twitter), but the debate exchange over Springfield, Illinois educated me. The cat memes are hilarious.

Meanwhile, Trump spoke to disaffected, everyday Americans with zero connection to the insular Acela-corridor planet where the jet-setting Muir, Davis, and their protected class of colleagues exist. It’s really too bad that network broadcasters never think to reach out to everyday Americans for input as they ponder their debate questions. Maybe if they traveled outside the DC beltway and met a few.

I’m still waiting for a survey question that asks whether people believe reports that Haitian migrants are eating geese and other animals in Springfield, not to mention who is actually being “protected” in Springfield, whether people feel more or less safe, and whether Biden-Harris border policies are contributing to all this. Or, for that matter, doing anything to make things better, including controlling the flow of migrants and helping them assimilate into American culture.

Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, Haitian gang leader

Credit Muir for asking the perfect opening question: Are we better off than we were four years ago? Harris didn’t answer the question, and Trump flubbed his response. But for those who hung around long enough for final statements, Trump rose to his finest moment:

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So, she just started by saying she's going to do this, she's going to do that, she's going to do all these wonderful things. Why hasn't she done it? She's been there for 3 1/2 years. They've had 3 1/2 years to fix the border. They've had 3 1/2 years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn't she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful white house, go to the capitol, get everyone together and do the things you want to do. But you haven't done it. And you won't do it. Because you believe in things that the American people don't believe in. You believe in things like we're not going to frack. We're not going to take fossil fuel. We're not going to do, things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants. We're not ready for it. We can't sacrifice our country for the sake of bad vision. But I just ask one simple question. Why didn't she do it? We're a failing nation. We're a nation that's in serious decline. We're being laughed at all over the world. All over the world, they laugh, I know the leaders very well. They're coming to see me. They call me. We're laughed at all over the world. They don't understand what happened to us as a nation. We're not a leader. We don't have any idea what's going on. We have wars going on in the Middle East. We have wars going on with Russia and Ukraine. We're going to end up in a third World War. And it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban. She gave it to Afghanistan. What these people have done to our country, and maybe toughest of all is allowing millions of people to come into our country, many of them are criminals, and they're destroying our country. The worst president, the worst vice president in the history of our country.

And maybe when the media is done getting to the truth in Springfield, Ohio, they’ll take another trip to Port-au-Prince and cover that massive human tragedy as well, including what’s happened to millions and billions in US aid that seems to have gone for naught.

Morning Bonus: Who knew that I’d find myself in complete agreement with spiritualist/guru and former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson on the topic?