Whether former President Donald Trump touches down in Aurora remains to be seen. His penchant for making promises only to later renege is a lifelong feature of his flawed character. Regardless, he cares for the truth, the people of Colorado and the folks he is hurting not one jot.
While Trump’s baseless statements regarding Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs garnered the most attention as he was pilloried across the globe for his absurd claims, he actually mentioned Aurora twice during the Sept. 10 presidential debate. He is betting that his supporters will believe him over a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Trump is probably right.
His campaign has doubled-down on the assertions in the week and a half since as his loyalists have engaged in conspiracy theories wrapped in disinformation based on lies and exaggerations. For example, they continue to push the cat-eating narrative despite the woman whose call to police admitting that her cat, Miss Sassy, had apparently been hiding in the basement for a few days.
At least the owner had the courage to admit her error and apologize to her Haitian neighbors for the firestorm her unfounded allegations had created.
The same cannot be said for Trump or his campaign. To the contrary, they have vowed to visit both Springfield and Aurora. The mayor of Springfield, as well as the Republican governor of Ohio, have vocally opposed such a visit. They understand that he does not care about the damage he may cause to their communities if he believes that he can use the fabricated story to his electoral benefit.
Here in Colorado, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman has taken a different tact. While Coffman has publicly said the claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over the city are greatly exaggerated, he would welcome Trump and attempt to convince him that the issues had been isolated events that law enforcement had already addressed.
Coffman educating Trump is rich.
After Coffman lost a congressional race in 2018 after 10 years as a U.S. Representative, Trump twisted the knife because of Coffman’s perceived disloyalty. Of course, Trump has never been competitive in Colorado and Republicans in the state have been torpedoed by his presence on the national stage. But he made Coffman an example for others.
Coffman — whom I once worked for while he was the Colorado State Treasurer — immediately sought out another office and landed on Aurora. Always willing to alter his rhetoric in order to gain an electoral advantage, Coffman himself demagogued video of armed men in the apartment complex at the center of Trump’s claims. At least until local reporters began systematically exposing lies at the root of the conspiracy theories and the mistreatment of poor migrant communities at the hands of a landlord. But at least Coffman owned his mistake.
Trump does not care about the truth of the matter.
Fundamentally, Trump is a snake oil salesman. He knows that the more horrific the story he can tell, the more he can sell himself to voters susceptible to being manipulated. When he is not hawking golden sneakers, his own version of the Bible or stock in his social media company (whose crash has cost many of his loyalists significant sums of money), Trump is drumming up hate because he knows hate sells in an election.
His base is particularly susceptible to anti-immigrant hate. Picking on people who look different than you or come from a different place has long been a theme among certain subsets of the Republican Party. And played with subtlety, it resonates with some disaffected non-Republians as well; when things are not as some people envision they should be, those people become receptive to hate-mongers.
I rewatched Aaron Sorkin’s 1995 pre-West Wing movie, The American President, recently and in the final speech, Michael Douglas says of his opponent, “Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.”
Thirty years later, he may as well have been speaking about Trump.
Of course Trump is not subtle. He is incapable and uninterested in studying, retaining and reciting specific facts or numbers to support his position. He would much rather embellish a story and call any fact-check “fake news.” He has gotten away with that tactic for years, both with members of the media and the electorate.
And the theater of showing up in Aurora will help him do just that. It does not matter that Coffman disagrees with him or that he has no chance to win this state. It does not matter that the majority of the media will highlight his lies.
He only cares that he will get wall-to-wall coverage to blast out to his acolytes across the country.
So if Trump does touch down in this flyover state, hopefully more people will see it for what it really is. A desperate candidate taking a desperate action to halt his sustained slide in the polls. That is the only way to keep it from happening again.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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