Still no final words regarding whether Trump and/or Vance are going to Springfield, OH, but at least one Trump surrogate will be holding a town hall in the beleaguered city.

Vivek Ramaswamy will be there tomorrow, and he is ensuring that it won't just be a bitch session aimed at Haitian immigrants. He is inviting people from all walks of life to attend, and I expect that he will do an outstanding job representing the Republican ticket there. 

I love Vivek; although I am unconvinced he is the kind of guy who would succeed in the job of being chief executive of the country. Frankly, he is too smart for the job and too intellectual in particular. He is smart, quick on his feet, makes the political and policy cases for our cause extremely well, and appeals to people like me because of it. 

But what I am not certain of is whether a quick-talking intellectual is the sort of guy Americans can identify with. He is so smart that you kinda wonder whether he is "just like me" when it comes to empathizing with our day-to-day concerns. 

Of course, Trump isn't just like anyone, so in that I may be wrong. 

I’m hosting a town hall in Springfield, OH at 6:30pm on Thursday (details below). We’re inviting diverse voices from the local community, including Haitian immigrants. I don’t really blame the people of Springfield, either the locals or migrants, for what’s happening. I blame the…

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) September 17, 2024

Whatever the case, aside from Vance,  Ramaswamy is the smartest guy in the political field. I will be sure to watch. 

The Springfield controversy won't die down because it offends liberal sensibilities and because Trump has put immigration back onto the playing field in a big way. Trump is getting hammered as a racist and for punching down, but the message that immigration is harming small-town America is getting through to people after the issue dying down for a while. 

Those properties were just purchased in 2021 & had a plan to rent them at a higher rate to illegals after the Biden regime brought them in. Most people couldn’t risk buying many properties with shaky economy unless they knew something.

— Randall Murry (@rmurry1962) September 15, 2024

And Springfield may turn out to play an outsized role for a couple of reasons: there are allegations that the mayor is making bank on the influx of migrants as he appears to have recently invested in rental housing in a big way, and despite denials from local officials that there is any truth to the rumors of pets being killed, recent footage from a town meeting shows that at the very least the city manager knew of the allegations and of reports that they were. 

The city manager is off camera, but he admits that he knows of reports but that there is no proof. 

We now have the Springfield City Manager on video admitting they were aware of complaints about domestic animals being eaten as far back as March.

There's also a call report confirming this. pic.twitter.com/pHVw69UXlR

— Arch Kennedy (@ArchKennedy) September 18, 2024

It is striking how angry the city manager got. His constituent was merely reporting what people are saying and the hostile response was unwarranted. 

I have yet to see a response from the mayor about whether he is profiting off the skyrocketing rents in the city--they have escalated by 40% since this migrant influx started, and he bought the rental properties pretty much simultaneously with the federal government shipping people in. It looks suspicious, and he should respond to the allegations. Is he getting subsidies to rent these properties out?

I doubt that Ramaswamy will wade into that particular snake pit, but there is plenty to talk about, and the residents of Springfield will get a chance to make their concerns (or their happiness with the situation) heard. 

Vivek is also right about the Haitians themselves: it is not them as individuals who are the big problem here. Undoubtedly, many of them are friendly people who want to get ahead. But that isn't the point. The point is that Springfield residents should come first, and the feds dropping tens of thousands of migrants into a small city is unconscionable. 

It's absurd to believe that doing so wouldn't cause enormous problems, and you can rest assured that this wouldn't happen in a wealthy neighborhood. 

Ask the residents of Martha's Vineyard who couldn't live with 50 migrants. How many are being dropped into wealthier parts of any city in America? 

We all know the answer. This sort of treatment is reserved for the plebs whom the beautiful people think of as drug-addled rubes who deserve whatever they get.