Eau Claire redux. In his latest Wisconsin visit, Republican vice-president candidate JD Vance hammers at Trump campaign themes against migrants. He accused migrants of undermining the viability of rural health delivery (Fact check: No supporting data), crime rates that he said are soaring (despite facts to the contrary), and the disappearance of pet dogs and cats for meals (Fact check: Untrue). He blamed Democrats for rising inflation and gasoline prices (Fact check: Both inflation ndt gas are down.)
His second rally in Ray Claire in six weeks
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. – Vice presidential candidate JD Vance doubled down on the Trump pledge to deport migrants by the millions if elected. All of them will be “going home,” Vance told an indoor rally. He was inconsistent about whether he meant illegal migrants or all migrants, appealing, it seemed, to nativists in the almost wholly white crowd. Vance, who is white, called migrants a threat to rural health:
“A lot of our rural hospitals are bearing the burden of providing health care to millions of people who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with. And so those hospitals go bankrupt and then a lot of American citizens can’t afford health care. Now you might not think that rural health care access is an immigration issue. I guarantee it’s an immigration issue.”
Health and refugees
Although an industrial city of 70,000, Eau Claire is the hub of a largely rural western Wisconsin region. The city is struggling with health issues after he giant provider HSHS closed hospitals and clinics. (Fact check: Recent migrants comprise a miniscule 0.01% of Eau Claire’s population and even less in rural counties.) The city, also, has gone through assimilation of refugees from World Relief, a humanitarian aid group founded by the National Association of Evangelicals. The organization has settled 77 refugees fleeing war and persecution in central Africa and others from Venezuela and Colombia — and plans to resettle 100 more in October. The assimilation has been a low-level local issue. A lone billboard has accused city leaders of using tax dollars to “traffic Somali refugees” and of keeping the plan secret. (Fact check: Although most Somalis are black, no Somalis have been in the World Relief’s Eau Claire’d resettlement project.)
Campaigning together. Vance and wife Usha at Eau Claire rally.
Springfield dog dogs and cats
Vance arrived in Eau Caier haunted by his recent claim that Haitiann refugees in Ohio, his home state, were stealing and eating pet dogs and cats. Ex-President Tump amplified the claim in the September 9 debate with Democratic rival Kamala Harris. Pressed repatedly to tell his source for claim, Vance conceded he knew it was untrue but told it anyway to draw media attention to migrants as a national threat.
Zarate case
In Eau Claire, Vance moved on from the Ohio tale and focused on an arrest in the southwest Wisconsin city of Prairie du Chien, 150 miles away. A Venezuelan. Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, 26, was arrested September 9 and charged with rape and strangulation of his girlfriend and her daughter. The circumstances of Zarata being in the United States have been murky so far, but Republicans have glommed quickly onto claims of lax immigration policies. Said Vance “Every community is a border community.” A generalization in Trump and Vane messaging is that millions of migrant criminals in the country.
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