Littwin: As Trump spreads lies about migrants in Aurora, Mike Coffman says he wants to show him the truth
But, please, not too much credit. Actually, he should get no credit at all.
Coffman is telling everyone who will listen that he would welcome a Trump visit to Aurora, that he would love the opportunity to personally show Trump that violent Venezuelan gangs had not, in fact, taken over the city or, for that matter, even taken over slumlord-owned apartment buildings.
It would be, Coffman insists, "an opportunity to change the narrative for the city" — a false narrative that Coffman himself played a role in starting, but has since backed away from.
I've known Coffman for decades and the idea that he would welcome Trump might be the funniest thing he's ever said, although I don't know why anyone who lives in Aurora or cares about Aurora would be laughing.
And no one, least of all the city's mayor, should be welcoming Trump's promised visit to Aurora or, for that matter, his planned visit to Springfield, Ohio, where the Republican mayor has at least told the truth — that he doesn't want Trump anywhere near there.
As everyone must know, Trump is not interested in learning the truth. He will come to Aurora — if he actually shows up — to bash migrants, to bash Aurora, to bash Colorado, to bash the Democratic governor, to probably bash Coffman (who's a fellow Republican), to bash and to lie and to use the city as a platform to spread his vile bigotry.
What's certain is that Trump won't be on a fact-finding tour. It's hard sometimes to remember the last time Trump actually stumbled onto a verifiable fact. What's most predictable is that Trump will not meet with Coffman — they have a bumpy history — will not sit down for a briefing with police, will not do anything other than tell more lies.
To this point, Trump has doubled-down and tripled-down and quadrupled-down and more — you can do the math — on his lies about Haitian migrants eating the neighborhood pets in Springfield and his lies about gangs taking over Aurora and about the governor being "petrified" to talk about the issue and about the Aurora cops being too intimidated to confront the gangs.
At a rally the other day in Uniondale, New York, when Trump announced to loud cheers his plans to visit the supposedly violence-ridden cities, he joked, "You may never see me again, but that's OK."
And then: "Gotta do what I gotta do. 'Whatever happened to Trump?' 'Well he never got out of Springfield.'"
Funny, right?
Like the resulting bomb threats in Springfield are funny. Like the state police now patrolling schools in Springfield is funny. Like the Proud Boys marching there is funny.
Like the trashing of the mostly peaceful migrant community in Colorado is, gosh, I don't know, hilarious.
Try laughing at the fact that JD Vance's campaign had been assured that the cat-and-dog-eating rumors were false even as Vance began spreading the lie. Or that although Vance has acknowledged that the Haitians in Springfield are there legally , he said he would continue to call them "illegal immigrants" because, well, he's JD Vance and he wants to grow up to be Donald Trump someday.
Or maybe because, as a Washington Post columnist pointed out, Vance — a Yale Law School graduate — must think the word "illegal" is fungible.
In political circles, there is some debate as to whether Trump's migrant-bashing tour is good politics or desperate politics. Certainly, immigration has been a good issue for Trump in this campaign. And certainly since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Trump has upped the ante, and particularly now that the race is basically a tossup .
The current round of extreme immigrant bashing is obviously a strategy to energize the base, because what else could it be? How many people other than MAGA cultists are ready to believe that Haitians are firing up their grills for a backyard dog-and-cat barbecue?
The pet-eating story has been debunked and re-debunked and debunked again. And still Trump shouts it to the world. I guess it's better for him than trying to explain his support for the, uh, " Black Nazi " running for governor in North Carolina.
Trump certainly wouldn't be coming to Colorado because he thinks there's a chance he might win the state. In 2020, whatever Tina Peters might say, Trump lost Colorado to Joe Biden by more than 13 points. And in a recent YouGov poll of the state, Harris is leading Trump by 15 points.
If Trump actually makes it to Aurora, it will be because TV cameras are sure to follow, meaning Trump can declare to a large audience the lie that Aurora is a war zone. And he can repeat the lie that Venezuela is now safe because they've emptied the prisons and sent the inmates to the United States.
He'll probably repeat an uglier and more harmful lie — one that, according to polling, is believed by fully half of Americans — that Democrats want to allow non-citizens to enter the country so they can be registered to vote in the coming election.
And, surely, he'll repeat his threat to begin his deportation plan — in which Trump says he'll deport millions of migrants , possibly even using the military to do so, if elected again — in Aurora and in Springfield.
You think Mike Coffman really wants Trump to come to Aurora, where he can use the city as a convenient backdrop for spreading more lies and threatening the future of Aurora migrants?
I'm sure he doesn't. The truth is, I'm not sure why anyone would.
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