John Legend has taken to Instagram to defend his hometown of Springfield, Ohio, following former president Donald Trump’s completely unfounded ‘eating pets’ accusations.
The 45-year-old ‘All of Me’ singer share a five-minute video to his 15.8 million followers yesterday (12 September) following Trump’s attack on Haitian immigrants at the presidential debate on Tuesday (10 September).
During the debate, the 78-year-old Republican claimed: “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
John Legend took to Instagram to shut Donald Trump’s ludicrous claims down (Instagram/@johnlegend)
Obviously, this is a load of sh*t and Legend took to social media to ensure fans knew exactly that.
Reminding viewers that he grew up in Springfield, the hit-maker began: “You may have heard of Springfield, Ohio this week.
“In fact, if you watched the debate, we were discussed by our presidential candidates, including a very special, interesting man named Donald J. Trump.”
He then explained a little about the population history of Springfield explaining:
“Our city had been shrinking for decades.
“We didn’t have enough jobs, we didn’t have enough opportunity. So people left and went somewhere else.”
He added that when he lived there, the town had ‘upward of 75,000 people’ but, in the last five years, numbers were down to ‘like 60,000 people’.
He shared a five-minute video talking about his Ohio hometown (Instagram/@johnlegend)
However, during the Biden administration, more manufacturing jobs had opened up and employers were ready to hire people.
“So we got a lot of job opportunities,” he carried on, “and we didn’t have enough people in our town of 60,000 people to fill those jobs.
“And during the same time, there had been upheaval and turmoil in Haiti, and the federal government granted visas and immigration status to a certain number of Haitian immigrants so they could come to our country legally.”
Legend said ‘15,000 or so immigrants’ were added to the population of 60,000.
He then acknowledged the ‘challenges’ which arose following the population increase of 25 percent: “You might imagine there are some challenges with integrating a new population, new language, new culture, new dietary preferences.
The singer defended the Haitian immigrants against Trump’s extremely xenophobic rhetoric (Instagram/@johnlegend)
“All kinds of reasons why there might be growing pains — making sure there are enough services to accommodate the new larger population that might need bilingual service providers, etc., etc. So there are plenty of reasons why this might be a challenge for my hometown.”
He added: “The bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them, and they were willing to work, and they wanted to live the American Dream.”
The singer also shared ‘some facts about immigrants’ which included: “They usually do very well here.
“They are hardworking, they’re ambitious. They commit less crime than native-born Americans, and they will assimilate and integrate in time.
“But it takes time, so I think all of us need to have the same kind of grace that we would want our ancestors to have.”
Directly addressing Trump’s unfounded allegations, Legend added: “Nobody’s eating cats, nobody’s eating dogs. We all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment. How about we love one another?”
Legend ended his video statement telling fans: “I grew up in the Christian tradition.
“We said to love our neighbour as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ.
“How about we adopt that ethos, when we talk about immigrants moving to our communities, and don’t spread, hateful, xenophobic, racist lies about them?”
He captioned the post: “How about we love one another. See each other’s humanity…. Let’s talk about Springfield, Ohio.”
The pop icon signed off the post with his real name, ‘John R Stephens’.
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@johnlegend
