What People Get Wrong This Week: Immigrants and Pets
The 2024 presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump took place just a week ago. Long after the rest of this has been forgotten, one moment people will likely remember is when Donald Trump declared, “They eat dogs in Springfield, people who came. They eat cats. They eat.” pets of the people who live there.”
For many Americans, this baseless claim was so unusual that it was absurd and hilarious—the perfect subject for memes and jokes —but it was also memorable. Polls show that this was the main takeaway from the debate . About 67 million people heard this claim when it was first uttered, and according to a YouGov poll, only 39% of Trump supporters believe that claims about eating pets are “definitely false,” and that’s a lot of people who believe that simply this is not true.
Nobody eats pets
The first refutation of this statement occurred instantly. Debate moderator David Muir noted that there is no evidence that this is happening, citing Springfield’s city manager. In the following days, the city manager , Springfield’s mayor , and the city’s police department dismissed the lawsuit. The governor of Ohio and many, many others did the same.
At the debate, Trump defended his claim by saying, “I saw it on TV,” but that was also likely a lie. The BBC searched the video archives of “all major US television networks, including Fox, CNN and CBS” and could not find “a single television interview of this kind.”
So, if the accusation that Haitians are eating our pets didn’t come from the real world or something Donald Trump saw on TV, then where did it come from? The outskirts of the Internet.
The sources of “pets eat” lie
The sources behind this claim are the rumors and chatter currently scattered all over your city’s NextDoor page: A Springfield woman posted on Facebook about what she heard happened to her daughter’s friend’s lost cat . A woman, not an immigrant or Haitian, was accused of killing a cat in another city in Ohio. Springfield police have received several calls without any evidence about people stealing geese from the park . J.D. Vance re-posted a video taken in Dayton, not Springfield, of a non-Haitian immigrant frying something and claiming it to be a cat (although many have noted that it looks a lot like a chicken ).
According to NBC News , a small neo-Nazi group called Blood Tribe took this scant “evidence” and began spreading the rumor that “Haitians eat pets” on Gab and Telegram in August. People on Facebook and X supported him. J.D. Vance wrote about this. According to Trump’s friend Laura Loomer , rumors about Springfield “reached his desk”. He was informed of what these residents were saying.” The rest are memes you send in family text chat.
It’s a dark and depressing story, but the positive I see is the speed and thoroughness with which this rumor was debunked. I doubt that most people who first heard this statement at the debate believed it. According to a Data for Progress survey , 80% of all respondents called the claim about eating pets “very strange” or “somewhat strange.”
Even J.D. Vance doesn’t seem to fully agree anymore. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked about eating pets, the vice presidential candidate said , “If I have to create stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do. ” (Although in the same interview he added, “What I’m saying is that we’re creating history, meaning we’re creating American media that focuses on it,” so interpret that however you want.)
But even though the “immigrants eat pets” claim has been completely debunked, there’s one guy who keeps saying it .