Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday sharply criticized former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance for pushing the baseless claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been stealing and eating pets.
“It's a crying shame,” Harris said of the statements made by her Republican opponents during a panel discussion hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia. “My heart breaks for this community.”
Their claims were followed by bomb threats that forced the evacuations of multiple city, county and school buildings, including two elementary schools.
“There were elementary school children — it was school photo day; you remember what that's like, going to school on picture day? — who dressed up in their best, got all ready, knew what they were going to wear the night before, and had to be evacuated. Children. Children. A whole community put in fear,” Harris said. “Words have meaning.”
How Springfield was thrust into the national spotlight
Trump first amplified the baseless claims about the community's Haitian immigrants in the ABC debate with Harris, then doubled down on them on the campaign trail. City officials, including Springfield's mayor, have issued public pleas for him to stop.
At a press conference at his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Trump dismissed the notion that his comments have led to the bomb threats to Springfield’s schools.
“No, no, the real threat is what’s happening at our border,” he said.
“You say you care about law enforcement,” Harris said Tuesday. “Law enforcement resources are being put into this because of these serious threats that are being issued against a community.
“It's got to stop,” she continued. “We've got to say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that as usual is designed to divide us as a country, is designed to have people pointing fingers at each other. It's designed to do that.
“I think most people in our country, regardless of their race, are starting to see through this nonsense and starting to say, ‘You know what, let's turn the page on this,’” Harris added. “This is exhausting and it's harmful and it's hateful and … grounded in some age old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for.”
Harris fields questions from Black journalists weeks after Trump questioned her race
Harris's appearance before the NABJ panel came six weeks after Trump questioned her ethnicity and clashed with a journalist at the organization's national convention in Chicago. At that event, Trump said Harris "happened to turn Black" after years of "only promoting Indian heritage."
She was not asked about Trump’s comments about her race on Tuesday, but she repeated part of the response she gave when asked about them during the presidential debate earlier this month.
“This is not new in terms of where it's coming from,” Harris said, referring to Trump’s history of racial divisiveness. “Whether it is refusing to rent to people, rent to Black families, whether it is taking out a full page ad in the New York Times against five innocent black and Latino teenagers, the Central Park Five, calling for their execution, whether it is referring to the first black president of the United States with a lie, birther lies. And look, the American people deserve, and I do believe want, better than this.”
Harris says she called Trump after possible assassination attempt
The vice president's appearance at the event came two days after a Secret Service agent spotted a man who they say was armed with an AK-style rifle at Trump's golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., as the president was golfing. The man was arrested nearby and the FBI is investigating it as a possible assassination attempt.
Harris said she spoke by phone with Trump earlier Tuesday.
“I checked on him to see if he's OK,” she said. “And I told him what I've said publicly: There's no place for political violence in our country.”