Why Trump Hates David Bowie’s Family

Donald Trump hates David Bowie’s family. Well, I’m not sure how he feels about Duncan Jones, though Duncan Jones has been critical of Trump. But I know how Trump feels about Iman and Lexi Jones. He hates them. And he thinks the reason for his hatred is so obvious that reminding Americans of their mere existence should motivate people to vote Republican.

A key weapon in Trump’s electoral arsenal is to fan the flames of fear that the idealized America of the past is not just under threat of foreign invasion, but is currently under a kind of insidious assault by people who don’t look like who his audience thinks of as “us.” The exact target shifts from audience to audience. In Ohio, he besmirches Haitians living in Springfield, where, by most accounts, they are welcomed and have contributed to the community there. But they are there, and Trump’s point has less to do with Springfield itself than conjuring up the image of black people who eat dogs and cats as having taken over a stereotypical white middle-American community.

I should point out that Trump’s message about Springfield is not directed at Springfield. Springfield is a fictionalized case study Trump uses to make his case to those who don’t know. Those who do know know better. Springfield Mayor Rob Rue has said that Haitian immigrants are “contributing greatly” to the community, while Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has called efforts to deport them “a mistake,” declaring that their removal is “not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.” Both Rue and DeWine are Republicans.

Nonetheless, in a recent speech in Youngstown, Ohio, Trump said, “Well, you have a little town, beautiful little town in Ohio, where they dropped about 35,000 Haitians.” But, he went on to deliver what he assumed the audience would greet as good news: “Well, they’re being taken out, and they’re almost going to be done…And they’re getting their town back. They’re getting their town back.”

Putting aside Trump’s characteristic ambiguous use of pronouns, there was little doubt about what he meant. Before I bring this back to David Bowie’s family, I should admit that, when I heard Trump say, in his 2024 debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, that Haitians in Ohio were eating “the dogs” and cats, I thought I was hearing the death rattle of a failing campaign. Between that, his closing argument advertisements directed against transgender people and his Nazi-like rally at Madison Square Garden, I thought Trump had essentially realized he was beat, decided to stop trying to actually win and just go out spewing hate. Nobody, I thought, was going to buy it. Nobody on the fence, in swing states suffering real challenges, was going to fall for these made-up issues and exercises in scapegoating.

Boy, was I wrong.

It’s convenient to think these days, as it seems Republicans are about to be repudiated during the midterm elections (an assumption I am not prepared to make), that Trump got over the top, winning each of the swing states against Harris, because of voters concerned primarily about the economy. Today, the narrative goes, those voters are disappointed with Trump’s economy and are venting their anger about the cost of living. Maybe. That might be true as far as it goes in explaining voter attitudes now. But Trump’s closing argument in 2024 was about Haitians eating cats and dogs and Harris being for “they/them.” Plenty of polls showed Harris up, at least in some of the swing states she ended up losing, before Trump ratcheted up the hate factor to the point it became the main reason he was putting out for why he should be elected.

But if my little historical detour brings back bad memories, all that was Mr. Rogers compared to what he has subsequently said about Somalia and Somalis in America, you know, like Iman. Somalis are the boogeymen and boogeywomen of 2026. In Trump’s twisted thinking, Somalis probably serve his purposes even better than Haitians. Like Haitians, of course, Somalis are, first and foremost, Black. Somalia, like Haiti, is in rough shape and gets bad press. Also like Haitians, some communities in the United States have concentrated populations of people who either came from Somalia or whose ancestors did.

Minnesota is better for Trump than Ohio because Minnesota, which by most measures seems like a nice place to live (aside from the cold), has, in the telling, already been overrun. Minnesota is a “blue” state, and blue states are supposed to be, in Trump’s telling, terrible. Ohio, a “red” state and home of his vice president, should be the model that states like Minnesota should aspire to be like. All of America, according to this mythology, is under threat of becoming like the fictionalized Minnesota, a place within America that has failed because it accepted an influx of Black immigrants.

Minnesota, to Trump, is a hellhole. A lost cause. He has claimed that Minnesota schools take children from their parents and perform sex-change operations without their knowledge, that Minnesota’s governor supports executing newborn babies, and that the governor was behind cyberattacks on water systems. He has also asserted that Minnesota protesters are paid agitators and insurrectionists and falsely claimed that he personally sent in the National Guard to save Minneapolis during the 2020 unrest.

The cherry on top is that Minnesota provides, in the form of Somali-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a politician who, for Trump, embodies everything he is against. To Trump, she is an obvious villain, the picture he wants all undecided voters to have in their head when they think of Democrats.

Trump has said of Somali immigrants, “I don’t want them in our country” and “they contribute nothing.” He has warned that “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” and declared that “they’re taking over Minnesota.” Asked whether his remarks painted Somali Americans with too broad a brush, he replied, “I don’t care.”

The key for Trump is that the Somalis in Minnesota are Black, foreign, and Muslim, or at least he portrays all of them that way. That’s actually watering down how he portrays them, but aside from the connection to Minnesota, what Trump says he is fighting against in order to, you know, make America great again, describes Iman, who, like Omar, is a naturalized American from Somalia.

I should point out that the U.S. citizen parent of Lexi Jones was not David Bowie, who had been living in New York for the last 20 years of his life but never became a citizen, but Iman. In Trump’s wrongheaded view of the law, Iman’s citizenship should be easily revoked, and, despite the U.S. Constitution, someone like Lexi isn’t really a citizen to begin with. What they are, mother and daughter, are Somali.

My point is this: there is nothing about what Trump says about Somalis that doesn’t apply to Iman, most of which also applies to Lexi. What Trump says are words of hate. So, Trump hates David Bowie’s family. But it’s more generalized than that. What he says about Somalis is basically the same as what he says about Haitians, transgender people and almost everyone else he tells the rest of us we should fear. But if it doesn’t make sense to apply any of that rhetoric to Iman or Lexi, it shouldn’t make sense at all. And it doesn’t. Indeed, it is garbage.