Harris Condemns Trump’s ‘Hateful’ Claims About Springfield, Ohio

Vice President Kamala Harris said on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump’s unfounded claims about migrants in an Ohio city were “hateful rhetoric” and “tropes” that had been “designed to divide us as a country.”

“This is exhausting, and it’s harmful,” Ms. Harris said during an interview with Black journalists in Philadelphia. “And it’s hateful, and grounded in some age-old stuff that we should not have the tolerance for.”

She added, “It’s got to stop.”

Schools and government buildings have been shut down by bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, after Mr. Trump said at the presidential debate last week that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs — an accusation for which there is no evidence and which many Black Americans and Democrats condemned as racist.

Ms. Harris had not yet weighed in on the situation in Springfield, and her remarks on Tuesday at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists were her most forceful yet. She linked the growing tensions in the town to other examples of racism, such as the lie that Mr. Trump spread for years about Barack Obama having been born abroad.

Although she did not mention Mr. Trump by name, it was clear whom she was talking about.

“I learned at a very young stage of my career that the meaning of my words could impact whether somebody was free or in prison,” Ms. Harris said at one point, a reference to her long career as a prosecutor. Holding an office like the presidency, she continued, “means that you have been invested with trust to be responsible.”

Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, has also amplified the false claims about Haitian migrants, saying this week that he was willing “to create stories so that the