Spampinato: Trump is not fit to be president
Phil Spampinato is a resident of Dover.
In August, I wrote an Opinion in the Daily State News, “Elect a leader to unite, not divide.” I highly recommend it. Two weeks later, a friend told me a rebuttal had been written. I found Frank Daniels’ piece, “Why are some anti-Trumpers not endorsing Harris?” My friend was wrong, and I was disappointed. Mr. Daniels didn’t rebut my article. He criticized it as failing to include anything he thought to be significant, then he diagnosed me as having contracted Trump derangement syndrome. My first response was to go to WebMD and search for Trump derangement syndrome. You can imagine my relief when I found it is a fake disease. My next thought was, how ironic that a fake disease included Donald Trump’s name.
Mr. Daniels was apparently looking for a policy comparison between Trump and Kamala Harris. I did point out some policy failures during Trump’s term in office. He didn’t, as Mr. Daniels claims, create the greatest U.S. economy in history. That’s a lie. We experienced record unemployment and a record increase in the national debt under his administration. That’s the truth. But I did not intend to write about Trump’s policies; I wrote about his being unfit to be president. It’s more than him being a convicted felon, being liable for sexual abuse, being liable for fraud — though that should disqualify him immediately. Policy aside, Trump is unsuited to be president by virtue of his character. Consider the following recent examples.
In September, Trump said on national TV that illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet dogs and cats. He lied. Most Haitians there are legal immigrants, and no pets were eaten. A pipeline opened from Haiti to Springfield when local companies started hiring immigrants to work in food-processing plants. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has said that business owners told him that Haitian workers have been a critical postpandemic salve to their hiring struggles. Following Trump’s claims, as reported by Newsweek and The Associated Press, an emailed threat read that bombs had been planted in the homes of Springfield’s Republican mayor and other city officials. A second email stated that bombs would be detonated at locations including Springfield City Hall, schools and offices, leading to several evacuations. In addition, there was an emailed threat regarding a potential shooting on campus at Wittenberg University, a private liberal arts college in the city, leading to school evacuations and the canceling of planned events. What did Trump accomplish? He drove a wedge between the citizens of this town. He managed to strike fear in both the Haitian and non-Haitian communities. Why did he do it? “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance told CNN. Days earlier, Vance had acknowledged that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.” Officials in Springfield have said the allegations are meritless, with city police issuing a statement that there were “no credible reports” of Haitian immigrants harming pets. DeWine, a Republican, says he’s “infuriated” that the Republican presidential ticket is continuing to make false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, claiming that such comments are “hurtful to a lot of people,” according to Jonathan Martin of Politico. Of course, Springfield was left with the cost of refuting the lies and dealing with the bomb threats instigated by Trump.
Jamie McGregor, a fifth-generation Springfield resident and the owner of McGregor Metal, first hired Haitian workers after a large population of legal Haitian immigrants settled in the Ohio town in 2020. They now make up 10% of McGregor’s team of over 300 employees.
Chaos and violence descended on Springfield after the false rumor was spread nationally by Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. Amid that campaign, McGregor felt the need to speak up and defend the Haitian employees who are crucial to his business’s success. “They come to work every day. They don’t cause drama. They’re on time,” he told The New York Times in early October. He also defended his employees on “PBS News Hour,” noting that his Haitian employees are also his most reliable.
Since then, McGregor has faced a number of death threats, including posters around town with his face, alongside the word “traitor,” forcing him to increase security at his business. “Why are you importing Third World savages who eat animals and giving them jobs over United States citizens?” a voicemail left for McGregor said. He is being advised by the FBI, whose agents visited McGregor’s home Sept. 12 and told him to take the threats seriously, saying they had found several to be “credible.” They told him to keep his blinds shut, vary his driving routes, lock his business doors and wear gloves when opening his mail. In the last month, schools, hospitals and government buildings have received over 30 bomb threats.
Think about it. Trump knows he’s telling lies. He’s being told they are lies, yet he persists in raining hell down on a small Ohio town for his political gain and to create the kind of hatred Jamie McGregor and his family are experiencing. This man wants to be president? Is he fit to be president?
Look at it another way. Dover has a population of 40,000, with about 3,000 legal immigrants. What’s to stop Trump from saying crime in Dover is the result of the city being overrun by pet-eating illegal immigrants? Schools close. The hospital and government buildings have to be inspected more than once due to bomb threats. Since the Dover police are tied up inspecting buildings, they are not as available to cover street crime, which then increases. All to satisfy a felon’s ambition.
In October, Trump delivered a barrage of lies and distortions about the federal response to Hurricane Helene. During a visit to Georgia, Trump said of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: “He’s been calling the president, hasn’t been able to get him.” Kemp, a Republican, told reporters earlier that day that he had spoken with Joe Biden the day prior — and that it was Kemp who had initially missed a call from Biden, not the other way around. Kemp told reporters that he had successfully called Biden right back. Kemp added: “He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, ‘We got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process.’ He offered that, if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which — I appreciate that. But we’ve had (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) embedded with us since a day or two before the storm hit, in our State Operations Center in Atlanta; we’ve got a great relationship with them.”
At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Oct. 5, Trump strongly suggested that Americans who lost their homes in the hurricane were only being offered $750 in federal aid. “They’re offering them $750, to people whose homes have been washed away. And yet, we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They’re offering them $750. They’ve been destroyed. These people have been destroyed,” Trump said. He added, “Think of it: We give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars, and we’re handing North Carolina $750.”
Trump’s claim is wrong. As FEMA explained earlier in the week on social media and on a webpage it created to combat misinformation about the response, $750 is merely the immediate, upfront aid survivors can get to cover basic, pressing needs, like food, water, baby formula and emergency supplies. Survivors are also eligible to apply for additional forms of assistance, such as to pay for temporary housing and home repairs, which can be worth thousands of dollars; the current amount for home repair assistance is $42,000. In an interesting twist, Project 2025, the blueprint for the next Republican administration, would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, letting states handle major weather events themselves. Having been president, Trump probably knew this but saw a chance to anger his voters.
Trump criticized Kamala Harris for not visiting hurricane-hit North Carolina — while she was there.
Mayor Glenn Jacobs, a Republican who serves Knox County, Tennessee, signaled in a post online that the attacks on the administration could make recovery efforts more difficult. “To my knowledge, (not) FEMA, (the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency), nor anyone else is confiscating supplies,” Jacobs, a former professional wrestler, wrote on social platform X. “Please quit spreading those rumors as they are counterproductive to response efforts. If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great.”
As the election draws near, expect the flood of lies to intensify. Expect bad actors like Trump to push politically convenient rumors. It’s crucial that we remain vigilant. Our democracy depends on voters being capable of discerning fact from fiction.
Donald Trump lies. His lies hurt Americans. And, unless we confront this storm of misinformation head-on, we’re in for a very dark chapter in our nation’s history. When you go to vote, consider how Trump has shown his willingness to create chaos, damage a city, harm a small-business owner and his family, and lie, even when he is demonstrably wrong. With Trump, it’s not about helping the country; it’s about doing anything that furthers his ambitions. Trump is not fit to be president of the United States.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
