With the presidential debate well behind us, one issue raised in that performance still lingers unresolved: Are Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating ducks and cats?
In yet another strange turn in this strangest of political seasons, former President Trump did go there, touching on a claim that has been making the rounds on social media posts showing video footage of Springfield residents complaining that Haitian refugees are dining out on the local goose and cat population.
The city manager of the town, who is also responsible for running the refugee resettlement program that brought the Haitians to Springfield, has denied the problem exists.
Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers consider the Springfield issue in the latest episode of the Drill Down podcast. While they take no position on the cat-and-goose claim, they note that there really is a problem in Springfield for which the Biden-Harris Administration bears some responsibility. The co-hosts noted that the Biden administration placed 20,000 Haitian refugees in Springfield, a town with a pre-refugee population of 59,000.
And while the details of that cat story are still hazy, one thing that’s clear is that an 11-year-old local boy was killed on his school bus after a Haitian immigrant with an unrecognized international driver’s license crashed into the bus last year.
In response to the refugee problem, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has ordered state law enforcement officers to Springfield to help secure the community’s safety, while calling on the Biden Administration to act. “They have to step up,” DeWine said. “It’s their policies that have created these surges.”
Whether the Biden Administration is motived to help Springfield is another matter. Staff from the Government Accountability Institute confirmed that Trump won Clark County, Ohio, where Springfield is located, by twenty-three points in the 2020 election.
Schweizer and Eggers also touch on other notable angles from the debate, including an apparent tilt toward Harris on the part of ABC’s moderators. David Muir and Lindsey Davis fact-checked Trump at least four times while not correcting false statements made by Harris even once.
Peter Schweizer, host of the DrillDown podcast, was himself an award-winning debater while in school. He avoids watching presidential debates these days because they upset him too much. “I get too emotionally wrapped up in the debate. I get angry when something stupid is said by a candidate. I get angry when somebody lies. And I probably get the most angry at the moderators,” he said.
Critics of ABC’s choice of moderators noted that Davis is a member of the same college sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, as Harris, and there are other conflicts of interest.
It turns out that one of Kamala Harris’s biggest fans – and longest donors – is none other than Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News. Walden has donated to Harris’s campaigns since 2003 when she ran for San Francisco district attorney, and she hosted fundraisers for Harris’s various campaigns until as recently as 2022, when ABC News came under her purview as a Disney Co. senior executive, according to the published reports. ABC News has denied that Walden had any influence on its choices of moderators.
“The one thing I learned in debate is that it’s not about engaging in a Socratic Method search for the truth. It’s just about winning,” Schweizer said.
For more from Peter Schweizer, subscribe to The DrillDown podcast.
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