At the debate tonight, former President Donald Trump joined in on a racist messaging campaign against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio which has been boosted and pushed by some of his closest allies over the past couple of days.
“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions of millions of people to come into our country, and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States,” Trump said referring to the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy, before launching into the soundbite.
“A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it—they’re not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said.
ABC’s moderator David Muir jumped in to say that the network had contacted Springfield’s city manager, who told them that there had been “no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
“Well I’ve seen people on television,” Trump shot back. “The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food, so maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager, but the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.”
“Again, the Springfield city manager says there’s no evidence of that,” Muir said.
“We’ll find out,” Trump said.
In hyping the fears, Trump managed to get the animals wrong. Over the past few days,
AI memes have flooded the internet showing Trump saving cats, dogs, and ducks.
But despite the swirling rumor mill, no stories about dogs have come up before Trump mentioned it.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who’s Trump’s running mate, has been soliciting the local community for reports of immigrants hunting, eating, or kidnapping animals. Springfield Police told the local Springfield News-Sun that they had no reports of pets being stolen or eaten, the paper reported on Monday.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) told the Daily Dot that a viral photo of a man carrying a goose is “several months old” and doesn’t come from the Springfield area.
Social media posts from around Springfield have included claims that park rangers and police have been telling police about the incident, and some local Facebook groups are still circulating claims that cats are being eaten. One man who posted about knowing on what street it was happening didn’t immediately respond to questions from the Daily Dot asking for more information.
ODNR said that people have contacted them asking about ducks and geese, but didn’t have any more information to share.
“Our officers work on tips and observations, they then make contact. Those contacts don’t always find criminal activity, so no summons or charges are filed,” a spokesperson clarified.
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