Last Tuesday, the governor of Ohio held a press conference urging parents in Springfield to send their kids back to school. For over a week, death threats had caused school closures and necessitated the closing of government buildings. The day before the presser a couple of grammar schools had to be evacuated because of bomb threats. So the governor has called in state police to guard the schools but many parents are still afraid to send their kids back, some are considering home-schooling for the rest of the year.
All of the threats causing these closures are a result of lies being repeated by the current Republican candidates for president and vice president of the United States, as well as many Republicans in Congress. Yep, you heard that right, state troopers had to be called in and parents are afraid of sending their kids to school in Springfield Ohio because of the ongoing actions of Trump and J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance is a Senator of Ohio, he is spreading lies that are literally disrupting the lives of the people he’s been elected to serve.
Has this caused Trump and Vance to backtrack and try to reverse the chaos they have unleashed? No, are you kidding? They’ve quadrupled down. Trump has been ranting about deporting illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield (they’re here legally) and ranting about Venezuelan gangs taking over towns in Colorado, among other blatant lies.J.D. Vance is calling into question whether they are actually here legally (they are).
Meanwhile, someone was caught waiting for the chance to shoot Trump while he was golfing on Sunday. The media is calling it an assassination attempt, headlines read “shots fired at Trump’s golf course” in countless newspapers. To be clear, the gunman never was close enough to have Trump in his sights. The shots fired were from the secret service member who spotted him. Troubling yes, but Trump insists on playing golf at his properties—it’s the only chance he has to take a break from demonizing people on TV—even though the Secret Service has repeatedly told him it’s a hard area to secure. This lack of clarity by the media has allowed Trump to blame the incident on hate speech coming from Democrats.
See the problem we have here? We have the Republicans, Trump and Vance especially but the rest are more than willing to go along, doing things that are unheard of in modern times in America. Using rhetoric so hostile and dangerous that American citizens are now afraid to send their kids to school. And when Democrats, or anyone, point out how dangerous they’ve become they call it hate speech against them. Pointing out that Trump and company drummed up an insurrection in 2020 and are currently planning on stealing the next election and ending our democracy is hate speech according to Republicans.
This is really dangerous and the press has to be very careful. We already have a vast disinformation apparatus in FOX News, and countless other websites, podcasts, and web-based news channels working around the clock to prove that Democrats are trying to destroy America and that they are targetting Trump politically, legally, and with political violence. All false accusations, of course, Trump’s legal woes are completely of his own making by, now get this, doing illegal stuff. We can’t have what semblance of legitimate media we have further confusing the issue by trying to equate what’s happening on both sides.
The press needs to be very clear. Trump and company are fanning the flames of fear and division while promoting violence. They are putting in place methods to contest local elections. They have Project 2025, a blueprint for ending our exercise in democracy. They have talked about prosecuting political opponents and even talk show hosts. Pointing all of that out is legitimate and they’re trying to gaslight us into thinking it’s hate speech.
Thanks to the Electoral College this election hangs by a thread and the Republicans are banking that enough disinformation will tip the balance in their favor, and they’re right, it could. At least 70 million people will still vote for them. We need clarity and I think people are craving it. What Vance and Trump are doing to the town of Springfield, Ohio is criminal. There is no nuance to it. Vance is willing to put the lives of his constituents at risk to confuse enough people in order to win this election. The fact that he has a media apparatus willing to give him cover and the entire Republican party willing to go along with him is terrifying and once again proves that they will do anything to take power.
We can’t have the rest of the media fishing for clicks and confusing the issues. If they lose they’re going to do everything they can to distort reality and it’s going to be chaos. We need the media to keep it together and report on the reality of what they’re doing.