It’s more
So much of what Donald Trump does and says is not strategy so much as pathology. And feral instinct. His fanboys handle strategy.
The emergence of the Haitians eating animals story this week was serendipitous. (Was it?) But J.D. Vance promoting it is creepy as hell. Everyone non-MAGA (especially the media) is treating Trump repeating the Haitians eating pets tale as a crude, racist smear, and more evidence of Trump’s mental decline. It is. But it’s also worse, isn’t it?
“I know it feels like all fun and games with the eat dogs comment,” my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio tweeted. It’s not.
The Washington Post offers “Anatomy of a racist smear” to explain where and how this vicious meme about Haitian immigrants spread:
Kathleen Belew, a historian of U.S. white-supremacist movements, wrote on X on Tuesday that such demonization campaigns are an old tactic that should be taken seriously. The debunked claims about Haitian refugees aren’t “just nonsense,” Belew warned: “The people spreading this rhetoric either know exactly what they’re doing, or they should know. But violence follows. Every time.”
The online right went nuts with the cats and ducks memes. It’s hard to read how many of the “crank” & file think they’re simply trolling the left, how many actually believe the propaganda, how many are going Radio Rwanda in preparation for a Trump 2.0 pogrom against immigrants (or anyone else Trump designates as his enemy), and how many are going Radio Rwanda without being fully conscious that’s what they’re doing.
If it’s Stephen Miller doing it, sure. I can’t look at the guy without picturing him in a black SS uniform with a death’s head on his cap. He’d go Radio Rwanda in a skinny minute.
But I don’t have a read on where the broader MAGA cult is at on this.