Donald Trump can say whatever he wants in the US election campaign. His followers buy everything from him – even the rumor that migrants from Haiti eat pets. A local inspection in Springfield (Ohio) and Flint (Michigan).
Springfield is synonymous with small-town America, where everything has its own well-established order: a small center with a church and bank branches, at walking speed in front of schools and houses with front gardens and neighborhood festivals, where pumpkins and rattleskeletons herald Halloween in the fall and blue and red signs with the candidate couples from the elections shortly afterwards. The cult TV series “The Simpsons” popularized a fictional Springfield that could be anywhere in the country – and that also exists as a city in almost every US state. In Massachusetts, for example, it is home to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and in Illinois it is home to the capitol.
In September, however, Springfield, Ohio achieved dubious worldwide fame. As a city where migrants from Haiti eat cats and dogs. It’s a joke like Homer Simpson, the patriarch of The Simpsons, could have invented. The craziest story in an election campaign full of craziness. Everyone howled – some in disbelief, others in indignation.
