SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The news cycle of the 2024 presidential election has been full already. A president dropped out. A new Democratic ticket was installed. Two foiled assassination attempts on Donald Trump - and some headlines have been only myth, like false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets. But even after being debunked, fringe ideas and lies can still become major campaign themes. We're joined now by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, thanks so much for being with us.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Pleasure.
SIMON: Let's begin with that story out of Springfield, Ohio, that isn't. Polls show U.S. voters care about immigration and the border. But how does a story that is not true get more attention than any real debate about the border?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, it involved a conscious choice. And let's focus for the moment on the Republican vice presidential candidate. That's Senator JD Vance of Ohio. He said that he was hearing from constituents that illegal immigrants, Haitians who are in the town of Springfield, Ohio, were stealing the house pets of their neighbors and cooking and eating them. You know, former President Donald Trump picked up on that, amplified it at various campaign utterances, and Vance really was pushing it out, too.
Now, at a certain point when reporters were calling local officials and finding nothing to back that up, the Trump campaign put out a police report from August, in which a woman did complain and said that she believed that her missing cat had been stolen by a neighbor. If you read the police report, which I have done, it does show you that the cop who took the complainant said, there's no evidence to support this, and the complainant doesn't know the name of her neighbors or which one might have done this.
And, in fact, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal went to that woman, did what we're all supposed to do. He said, what happened? What did you learn? And she said, actually, I found my cat in the basement three days later. So Senator Vance then is questioned on CNN about all this. Dana Bash takes sort of a tough line on him. Here's how that exchange went.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STATE OF THE UNION")
JD VANCE: I have to...
DANA BASH: But it wasn't just...
VANCE: If I have to...
BASH: ...A meme, Sir.
VANCE: ...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, Dana.
FOLKENFLIK: And so what you're hearing - Vance there is saying, listen, I'm going to push a story that I have no reason to believe is true or that I might even know isn't true if only to get you to focus on a question that the Trump campaign wants. That's comfortable terrain of immigration right now.
SIMON: David, Tucker Carlson is going to interview JD Vance - Hershey, Pa., today. Tucker Carlson has been interviewing a number of right-wing figures at live venues across the country recently, including a Holocaust denier. But then there are these comments that Donald Trump made Thursday night in Washington, D.C.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: I'll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can. I wasn't treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish. I don't know - do they know what the hell is happening? If I don't win this election - and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.
SIMON: What do you make of this, David?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think about political rhetoric a lot. If you look at this, he's calling the Democratic ticket not his opponent, but the enemy. That's a pretty intense and fraught phrase. Not the first time he's done it - but he's also singling out a specific ethnic group to blame. He's saying they would have a lot to do with my losing if that happens. This is the sort of thing that, in other countries, Jews have experienced over the decades and centuries, certain kinds of targeting and pogroms. That's kind of a scary overtone for a lot of folks.
And for the press, there's something of a challenge, as well because you've got to figure out, do we simply report what he's saying, or do we present the context in which he's done? No, Trump didn't explicitly say there should be violence of any kind. But he is scapegoating Jewish voters who may not agree with him and should have every right not to do so.
SIMON: Another big breaking political story this week - CNN talking about new allegations about Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson. What do we know?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, Mark Robinson is an African American Republican candidate there. Been sort of an incendiary figure - very much an embracing of Trump - but right now is not scheduled to appear with Trump in North Carolina today for the clear reason of what CNN has reported. And they have made connections between Robinson and posts on a site that sort of trafficked in pornographic material and conversation.
And not only did the person who CNN is identifying as Robinson talk about his own sexual proclivities there and interests in great explicit detail but also took these extraordinary stances, where he basically called himself a Black Nazi. He expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and said that if there were still slavery, he would like to own slaves. This is just remarkable rhetoric.
I want to be very clear that Robinson has denied all this and said that his opponents may well be using AI to bring him down. But Andrew Kaczynski, the reporter for CNN who's made a career of looking at the past records of public figures, you know, has sort of unpacked and been transparent about why he made the conclusions about Robinson, who is currently the lieutenant governor there.
SIMON: David, do you see anything in this moment that ties all this stuff together?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think there's been sort of an absorption into the mainstream - particularly in the Republican Party, but in political life - of things that we would have thought were utterly extremist and would be disqualifying. And I think that you've seen, through certain elements of the conservative far-right press - figures like Tucker Carlson, who himself has been exiled from Fox News, but at times, Fox News itself and Newsmax and others but also the former president and his ticket - an affirming of the idea that these are figures and thoughts that are not verboten but that are at least something that could be entertained. And I think that's a tough moment for America to find its in and a real challenge for the press to report on.
SIMON: NPR's David Folkenflik. Thanks so much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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