US President Donald Trump sought to rally support for Sen. Jon Husted’s reelection campaign on Monday by targeting Somali and Haitian immigrants during a rally in Ohio, where a Republican-linked organisation has begun promoting a socialist candidate over Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown.
Trump also acknowledged Rep. Max Miller, a Republican congressman who continued his reelection campaign despite facing allegations of domestic abuse, by thanking him for attending the rally.
“Thank you, Max, for coming,” Trump said. “Thank you. Very good.”
Immigration remained a central theme of Trump’s speech. He has repeatedly targeted Minnesota’s large Somali immigrant community and on Monday linked it to Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. During a presidential debate in 2024, Trump falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in the Ohio city.
Referring to the allegations on Monday, Trump insisted, “I was right,” while boasting that his administration’s policies were driving Haitians out of the country.
“If you want to stop Ohio from being plundered, ransacked and destroyed like Minnesota is being destroyed, we’re going to stop it,” Trump said. “Just like we did with Springfield, we’re going to stop it, we’re not going to let it happen.”
His remarks came on the same day that Department of Homeland Security agents searched the Washington home of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant who represents a Minnesota district.
Trump visited Youngstown less than a week after holding a rally in Dayton. His strong focus on Ohio, which he won by 11 percentage points, highlights the difficult political environment Republicans face ahead of the midterm elections amid the war with Iran and persistent inflation.
Besides the Senate race, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is locked in a close contest for governor against Democrat Amy Acton.
The rally also underscored Trump’s willingness to use his presidential platform to support political allies. During the event, he announced that a new submarine component manufacturing centre would be established in nearby Cleveland, while continuing his attacks on Black immigrants.
In 2018, Trump privately criticised immigrants from countries such as Haiti, using an expletive to describe them and questioning why the United States could not attract more migrants from countries such as Norway. The remarks were condemned as racist, although Trump initially denied making them. He acknowledged using the phrase last year.
Since returning to office, his administration has pursued tighter immigration restrictions and barred refugees from entering the country except white South Africans.
At Monday’s rally, Trump celebrated what he described as an exodus of Haitians from Springfield. His administration ended a programme that had allowed more than 350,000 Haitians to remain legally in the United States, including some of the roughly 15,000 Haitians who moved to Springfield, a city with a population of 60,000, in recent years.
“They’re getting their town back,” Trump said, referring to Springfield’s original residents.
He also repeated his debunked claim from the 2024 presidential debate that Haitian immigrants were eating local pets. The allegation originated from a secondhand Facebook post whose author later deleted it and apologised, saying she had no evidence to support the claim.
Trump devoted even more time to disparaging Somali immigrants, claiming they had “low IQ” and “don’t have pants to wear.”
His primary objective was to boost Husted, who was appointed to replace Vice President JD Vance in the Senate in 2024. Husted faces a difficult challenge from Brown, a longtime senator who lost his seat to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024.
The presidential visit came as campaign mailers sponsored by the Enough Promises Ohio PAC began arriving in voters’ mailboxes in recent days. The materials promote independent candidate Greg Levy over Brown, using slogans such as “Join the Revolution” and “Send a Worker to the Senate.”
Levy describes himself on his X account as a “Socialist running for the U.S. Senate to represent Ohio in 2026.”
He condemned the mailers, accusing their sponsors of falsely impersonating his campaign and using “dirty tricks” to mislead voters. Levy said he was considering legal action.
“This is a highly undemocratic practice and does a disservice to voters in Ohio and throughout the country,” he wrote on X.
Federal Election Commission filings show that Enough Promises Ohio was established on September 29. The organisation has not yet been required to disclose its contributors, but additional federal records indicate links to Republican political operatives.
The group paid the firm Seven Farms more than $397,000 on two dates last week for printing, postage and mailing services intended either to support Levy or oppose Brown.
Seven Farms, which is also a newly established entity, lists the same South Carolina business suite as Whistlestop Strategies LLC.
Whistlestop is a direct-mail operation run by Big Dog Strategies LLC, a political strategy firm that advises Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC and managed Moreno’s successful 2024 campaign against Brown.
Neither Enough Promises Ohio nor Big Dog Strategies responded to requests for comment.