September 11, 2024 12:08 PM UTC

Aurora Apocrypha Helps Trump Crash And Burn On National Television

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris faced off against former President Donald Trump in what could well be their only debate before the November elections. If this does prove to be the only debate between the candidates it will not be the choice of the Harris campaign, who after last night immediately offered Trump a rematch.

The reason Harris is willing and eager to debate Trump again is simple: Harris didn’t just defeat Trump, she repeatedly drew out the very worst of Trump’s vile campaign rhetoric for this national audience, and then tore it apart in a way that none of Trump’s opponents from 2015 to the present day have managed to accomplish. Democrats whose hopes for keeping Trump from reclaiming power were nearly dashed in the debate between Trump and President Joe Biden in June went into this debate only hoping that Harris would hold her own. What they witnessed instead was what even most Republicans are forced to concede was an epic thrashing of the former President, as undeniable a boost for Harris’ momentum as Trump’s dominance over Biden was for the former President’s campaign.

Which is why the Trump campaign today is saying thanks but probably no thanks to the offer of a second debate.

The contrast between a fully-prepared Vice President Harris and Trump’s free-wheeling falsehoods derived from campaign stump speeches, packed full of whatever misinformation the conservative media is panicking about on any given day, was as devastating for Trump as Biden’s inability to counter Trump’s onslaught of insults and slogans was for Democrats back in June. And because Colorado, more specifically the Republican-controlled city of Aurora, is currently in the right-wing fake news headlines, within minutes of the start of last night debate, the supposed “takeover” of this city of nearly 400,000 was front and center. As AP reports via the Aurora Sentinel:

Trump referred to the “town of Aurora’ twice during the debate in an effort to attack Harris on immigration policy. He he referred to the unproven and debunked claim, promoted on national news by Aurora Republican Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky, that parts of Aurora have been “taken over” by Venezuelan gangs.

Aurora is the center of a roiling controversy over unproven claims that apartment slums in northwest Aurora became dilapidated because of gangs running the complexes and stealing rent. Both city officials, police and numerous residents have repeatedly refuted the claim. While police said that all kinds of gang problems have existed in the 1-mile square area of Aurora, a 170 square mile city, for decades, no building or neighborhood is overrun by gang or crime issues.

As readers know, and Aurora police and sometimes the city’s Republican Mayor Mike Coffman depending on the slant of the outlet he’s appearing on have said repeatedly, the “takeover” of Aurora by a Venezuelan gang is fiction that becomes more wildly exaggerated as the geographic distance from Aurora increases. While police have acknowledged some gang activity among migrant populations who arrived in Colorado in recent years, they only represent a tiny fraction of a longstanding local problem. Residents of apartment complexes alleged to be “taken over” by migrant gangs say they are much more afraid of their neglectful slumlords and racist backlash the false stories have invited upon their communities than gangs.

Run, Spot, run!!!

Before you’re dinner!

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) September 11, 2024

Although the truth about the situation in Aurora is getting out weeks behind the misinformation that caused a conveniently-timed political panic–and no thanks to local politicos like Rep. Lauren Boebert and CO-08 candidate Gabe Evans, who have eagerly taken up the “Aurora Has Fallen” fiction for their own campaigns–Trump could have stopped there and allowed the still-simmering debate over what’s happening to take its course. But the “takeover” of Aurora by Venezuelan gangs is not the only dubious anti-immigrant scare in conservative news headlines, and Trump proceeded from warning about the “takeover” of Aurora to a substantially nuttier rumor offered up this week by Trump’s equally overly-online veep nominee J.D. Vance. CBS News:

“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,” Trump said. [Pols emphasis] When ABC anchor David Muir responded that city officials disputed that, Trump insisted he had seen people saying so on television…

Similar to Aurora officials who insist their city has not been overrun by foreign gangs, locals in Springfield, Ohio are in full agreement that no one is eating anyone’s pets in that city, least of all the city’s legal Haitian refugee community. Before last night’s debate, J.D. Vance conceded that the reports may not be true, right before telling his supporters to “keep the cat memes coming” anyway–we assume because Vance is still bitter from the unsubstantiated (but not unproven) rumors about Vance’s inappropriate fetish for couches. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and the fake news that conservative media has been pumping out and Trump himself consumes and regurgitates did not help Trump make his case before normal America that he is fit to be President: the one thing Trump needed to do last night. At least some conservatives appear to understand this:

There will always be a percentage of voters who want to believe the most outrageous rumors that circulate online, most with no fact-checking whatsoever unless they get on the radar when an irresponsible politico like Trump, Vance, or Lauren Boebert broadcasts the falsehood to millions of followers. But clamorous and attention-getting though they may be, those voters are not a majority–and what attracts these voters to Trump is repulsive to the rest of the electorate. That’s the side of Donald Trump Harris repeatedly drew out and exposed to the world last night. As the debate went on and it was increasingly clear that Harris had the upper hand, Trump’s responses devolved into rants and slogans from his campaign stump speeches that in many cases weren’t even related to the question. The only place where this brute force rhetorical style has ever worked is inside the friendly confines of Trump’s events, and even there as Harris pointed out supporters are regularly seen leaving early these days out of “exhaustion and boredom.”

With help from some homegrown misinformation, Trump illustrated the obvious choice between competence and chaos in this election.