On Sept. 10, the same day that former President Donald Trump alleged on the debate stage that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats, a much greater man spoke before the Springfield City Council.

His name is Nathan Clark, and he is the father of Aiden Clark, an 11-year-old Springfield resident who was killed in an accident involving a Haitian immigrant. Both Trump’s campaign and his running mate, JD Vance, had just cited the accident to gin up hatred of the community’s large number of immigrants, most of whom are in the country legally.

Trump’s campaign posted that Aiden was “killed on his way to school by a Haitian migrant that (Vice President) Kamala Harris let into the country in Springfield, Ohio.” Vance followed this with a post saying “a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant.”

Aiden died in August 2023 when his school bus was hit by a minivan driven by Haitian immigrant Hermanio Joseph. About 20 other students were injured. Joseph was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide and sentenced to nine to 13 years in prison.

Nathan Clark, with his wife Danielle at his side, told the city council during its public comment period that Aiden “was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy is felt all over this community, the state, and even the nation, but don’t spin this towards hate. In order to live like Aiden, you need to accept everyone.”

Clark called the politicians, including Trump and Vance, who have sought to turn this sad event into votes “morally bankrupt.” He asked that his family receive an apology. “Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible,” Clark told the council. “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man,” because then “the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.”

He continued: “The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”

The campaigns of both Trump and Vance dodged questions about Clark’s remarks and have continued to lie about Haitians consuming pets, which has been thoroughly debunked.

Vance, for his part, angrily asserted his right to make things up in service of what he sees as a higher purpose (getting elected): “If I have to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

That this causes suffering for a grieving family is of no consequence to Vance, or to the MAGA crowd. Here are some of the online posts in response to Nathan Clark’s plea that people stop using his son to score political points, as reported in The Bulwark:

— “It’s sad that he’s OK with other children dying at the hands of illegals.”

— “The dad is a mentally ill leftist.”

— “Then I guess he should hug Biden and Harris for allowing the ‘immigrant’ to kill his son.”

— “Absolute slob, disgusting person.”

— “He is putting his politics above the life of his innocent child.”

This is the America Trump and Vance are working to create — a bleak landscape of anger and ill will where politicians and their followers shamelessly exploit every opportunity to sow fear and division. Aiden Clark deserves better than that. So does his family. So do we all.

_____

Bill Lueders is the former editor and now editor-at-large of The Progressive magazine. T his column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

_____

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.