“Now we have reports of pets being kidnapped and eaten by people who should not be in this country,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s running mate. He asserted On the morning of September 9, Springfield, Ohio, Mayor Brian Heck addressed rumors that Haitian immigrants were eating stolen cats and dogs in the city. said The Wall Street JournalVance’s staff called and asked, “Are the rumors true about pets being taken and eaten?”
Heck’s response was unequivocal: “I said no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
Despite Heck’s rebuttal, Vance made the claim again the next day: “My office has received numerous inquiries from Springfield residents whose neighborhood pets and local wildlife have been kidnapped by Haitian immigrants,” he said. Written On the morning of September 10, presumably based on a delayed fact-checking attempt by his staff, Vance acknowledged that “of course, it’s possible that all of these rumors could turn out to be false.” saidBut that possibility shouldn’t deter his “fellow patriots” from spreading the word. “Keep the cat memes flowing.”
Trump did just that in a big way that night during his ABC debate with Vice President Kamala Harris: “In Springfield, they’re eating dogs, they’re eating people who come in there, they’re eating cats. They’re eating the pets of people who live there. This is what’s going on in our country, and it’s a shame,” he complained.
Host David Muir said ABC News had consulted with Heck, as had Vance’s staff, and Heck said there were “no credible reports of specific allegations that pets have been harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Like Vance, Trump was unfazed. “That may be a nice thing to say for the mayor, but people on TV are saying their dogs were eaten by people who went there,” Trump responded.
In an interview with CNN last Sunday, Vance still seemed skeptical of denials from sources like Heck. Police Station; Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine be criticized The pet-eating immigrant story was denounced as “totally untrue garbage,” including by Springfield’s Republican Mayor Rob Lew, who said he had “told people at the national level that what they’re talking about is not true.” journalBut these allegations have been “repeated and strengthened.”
To justify continuing to spread what Vance called “rumors” that may not be true, the candidate’s staff said on Tuesday journal “Police reports claim residents may have had their pets taken by their Haitian neighbors,” but “when a reporter visited Anna Kilgore’s home on Tuesday evening, she said her cat, Miss Sassy, ​​who went missing in late August, was found safe and sound in the basement of her home a few days later,” Kilgore said. Kilgore, who was “wearing a Trump shirt and hat,” said, “with the help of his daughter and a translation app on his phone, apologized to his Haitian neighbors.”
The “cat eating rumor” journal “It started with a post from a Springfield woman on her private Facebook page,” he noted. The account was “discovered to be the work of a third party” and “has since been disavowed by the original poster,” according to NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation.
This is clearly the kind of evidence Vance had in mind. said CNN’s Dana Bash said his information about pet-eating immigrants “came from first-hand accounts from constituents in my district,” but Vance made it clear that he didn’t think it mattered much whether these stories were true.
“I’ve been trying to talk about the problems in Springfield for months,” he told Bash. “The American media totally ignored the issue until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to craft a story to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then I’m going to do it.”
