Local GOP lawmaker pushes back on Trump’s attacks on Haitians in Charleroi, PA

Donald Trump falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets in an Ohio town. Now, a Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker is calling out Trump’s comments about Charleroi’s immigrant community.

A Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker is responding to Donald Trump’s racist attacks against Haitian immigrants in her Western Pennsylvania district. 

Last week, Trump incorrectly cited a statistic claiming that the Haitian population of Charleroi, a small borough of 4,000 people in Washington County, grew by more than 2,000%. 

“What a beautiful name, but it’s not so beautiful now,” Trump said in Tucson on Friday. 

“It has experienced a 2,000% increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris. So Pennsylvania, remember this when you go to vote. This is a small town and all of a sudden they got thousands of people.”

Trump’s remarks came days after he made racist comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, OH during the debate with Harris. That lie was originally spread in local Facebook groups and then platformed by neo-Nazis and fringe online extremists in August.

Charleroi is known for glass making, but according to the Mon Valley Independent, the attacks on Charleroi’s Haitian community comes at a time when the town is about to lose 300 jobs due to Anchor Hocking, the producer of Corelle, Pyrex and CorningWare, closing their plant at the end of the year.

State Sen. Camera Bartolotta (R-Washington) posted on Facebook pushing back against Trump’s comments over the weekend.

“This is a completely different scenario than other states where Biden was flying or bussing in illegals from Haiti or from other countries,” Bartolotta said.

“Many of the Haitians in Charleroi have been here for two or three years already. They escaped horrific events in Haiti, many having to travel/hide in the jungles for months or years.”

Bartolotta then added, “to try to disparage these hard-working people who have escaped atrocities and who are here LEGALLY to WORK , and pay taxes, and raise their children, and be part of the community, etc. breaks my heart.”

“For some of these people saying awful things about these Haitian immigrants, I’d ask them what it might’ve been like for their parents or grandparents or great grandparents who might have come from another country and spoken a different language.”