Trump’s claim that immigrants eat pets is “insulting”

During Tuesday’s debate, the former president railed against immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. “They eat the dogs. They eat the cats. They eat the pets of the people who live there,” he claimed. Moderator David Muir said live during the debate that Springfield’s city manager had said there were “no credible reports of specific allegations that pets belonging to individuals in the immigrant community have been injured or mistreated.”

As Washington Post The rumor was reportedly started after an account on X (formerly Twitter) called “End Wokeness” posted a screenshot of a Facebook post on September 6 from a private group called “Springfield Ohio Crime and Information.” In it, someone warned that a neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat and later found it in a house where a group of people from Haiti lived. The cat was hanging from a tree branch and apparently dismembered for food.

A day before the debate, Trump’s running mate JD Vance tweeted: “Months ago, I raised the issue of illegal Haitian immigrants draining welfare and generally causing chaos in Springfield, Ohio. Reports say the pets of people who don’t belong in this country have been kidnapped and eaten. Where is our border czar?”

A video from last month also made the rounds on social media: a woman was arrested in Ohio for allegedly eating a cat. Conservative social media accounts saw it as proof of the claims about immigrants. However, the arrest took place in Canton, not Springfield. A Canton police representative told the post that the woman was not Haitian, but a “US citizen born in Canton, Ohio.”

John Legend of Springfield, Ohio, also spoke out against Trump’s comments and described the history of population changes in the city in a video posted on social media on Thursday.

The legend goes, in part, “Nobody eats cats, nobody eats dogs. We all just want to live and thrive and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment. How about we love each other?”