(Beth Clifton collage)
Hours after J.D. Vance eats false allegation about immigrants devouring dogs & cats in Springfield, Ohio, Donald Trump repeats it in debate against Kamala Harris
PHILADELPHIA––Former U.S. president Donald Trump gave away his strategy only moments into debating vice president Kamala Harris on the evening of September 10, 2024.
“It’s like four sentences like Run Spot Run,” Trump alleged of Kamala Harris’ economic proposals.
Trump referenced the simple language of the “Dick and Jane” reading primers introduced in 1948 and still popular in updated editions, but the “Run Spot Run” phrase also conveyed the notion that dogs and cats should run from the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.”
Trump returned to his “Run Spot Run” theme later in the debate, referring to illegal immigrants.
“In Springfield, Ohio, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in,” asserted Trump. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. This is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Kamala Harris, who brings to the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign by far the best record on animal issues of any candidate ever, could only struggle to suppress giggles.
(See VP Kamala Harris has long, strong record on animal issues.)
Fact-checked by ABC News moderator David Muir, who reminded Trump that Springfield, Ohio city officials had already refuted the claim that anyone there was eating dogs or cats, Trump responded, “I saw it on TV.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Only .008% of pet thefts over 45 years were for human consumption––and none by illegal immigrants
ANIMALS 24-7 has logged 1,614 verified pet theft cases in the U.S. since 1980.
Over that time, among 1,451 documented thefts of individual dogs and 163 documented thefts of individual cats verified by law enforcement, only 13 cases have involved thefts for human consumption, or .008%.
Only one case, originating out of a domestic dispute in Edgewood, New Mexico in 2014, may have involved an illegal immigrant. The suspect in that case was on probation after a 2003 conviction for bringing 13 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. from Mexico––but he was believed to be a U.S. citizen.
The two faces of Marc Ching.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Trump, dog & cat meat, & convicted scammer
Trump might have hoped his “Run Spot Run” opening would allow him to talk about having signed into law a largely symbolic and never enforced “Dog and Cat Meat Prohibition Act” incorporated into the 2014 Farm Bill, “spearheaded and sponsored by the Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation,” founder Marc Ching claimed at the time.
Ching, however, an ex-convict with a history of violent drug-related offenses, was exposed in 2020 by the Los Angeles Times for having allegedly raised $5.2 million with false claims about dog and cat eating both in the U.S. and China.
Charged with multiple related criminal offenses, Ching in August 2021 plea-bargained a conviction for practicing veterinary medicine without a license.
Ching had been embraced by both People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the U.S., but ANIMALS 24-7, having personally investigated dog and cat consumption in many nations where it is alleged to occur, was skeptical of Ching’s claims and purported visual evidence from the beginning.
(See Horsemeat, dog meat, & how “angel” Marc Ching fell from grace.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
How it all started
Within hours of the Harris/Trump debate, Columbus Dispatch reporter Chad Murphy investigated and refuted Trump’s “Run Spot Run” charges right from their beginning, with help from other journalists around Ohio.
How it all started, Murphy found, was that, “Springfield, Ohio, an industrial town of about 58,000 just northeast of Dayton, has seen its Haitian population swell to 15,000 to 20,000 in recent years, according to a previous Cincinnati Enquirer article. City Manager Bryan Heck wrote to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown and Tim Scott asking for support to ease a ‘significant housing crisis’ in the city.”
J.D. Vance, running for vice president on the Trump ticket, cited the Heck letter, recounted Murphy, causing “stories on social media to explode, which quickly turned into allegations against immigrants that aren’t true, per the Springfield Police Department and Heck’s office, as the Springfield News-Sun reported.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Vance helped spread the rumor”
“Vance helped spread the rumor on social media about pets being eaten, which was refuted by Heck,” wrote Murphy.
Meanwhile, Murphy traced “photos and video being taken out of context or wholly misidentified, being used to spread misinformation about Haitian immigrants in Ohio.
“One such photo shows a man carrying a dead goose in Columbus,” 50 miles from Springfield. The photographer himself told Murphy that it did not show anything appropriately “weaponized to use against immigrants, or really, any other group.”
(Beth Clifton photo)
Local cruelty case misrepresented
“Likewise,” Murphy continued, “video posted on YouTube by the ‘Fake News Network’ that is titled ‘Haitian Woman Eats Neighbour’s Cat in Springfield’ falsely claims to show police officers confronting a Haitian woman in Springfield about eating a cat, the Canton Repository reports.
“What the video actually shows,” Murphy summarized, “is police department bodycam footage of Canton officers at the scene of the August 16, 2024 incident in Canton. It’s part of an ongoing court case about a 27-year-old Canton resident,” born and raised there, “accused of killing and eating a cat.
“Allexis T. Ferrell is charged with cruelty to companion animals, a fifth-degree felony. It is alleged she killed the cat by stomping on its head before eating it. She has entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and is being held on [bond of] $100,000.”
Emailed Canton police spokesperson Lieutenant Dennis Garren to the Canton Repository, “Ferrell was first arrested in Canton in 2011. We have no reason to believe that she is not a U.S. citizen.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“This is something that is racist”
Well ahead of the Harris/Trump debate, in plenty of time for Trump to have dropped the debunked “Run Spot Run” allegation about immigrants from his repertoire, Dana Bash, host of the CNN program Inside Politics, pointed out that, “This is something that is racist…suggesting that people of color are eating your pets.”
The MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, hosted by Joe Scarborough, also “slammed J.D. Vance,” ahead of the Harris/Trump debate, The Daily Beast reported, “for pushing a bizarre claim that illegal immigrants are eating people’s cats in his state.
“The bizarre conspiracy spread like wildfire online,” The Daily Beast said, “as MAGA figures pushed the claims, which appear to stem from a post in a Facebook group for Springfield, Ohio, residents that said Haitians in the area were hunting animals including cats and ducks.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“What’s this guy’s obsession with cats?”
Morning Joe co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Katty Kay laughed about the claims, before Joe Scarborough asked about Vance, “What’s this guy’s obsession about cats? The guy has this singular obsession with cats—first talking about childless cat ladies, and now talking about the eating of cats. He knows he’s lying. He knows this is nonsense. He knows he’s playing to the lowest common denominator.”
Trump and Vance amplifying unverified nonsense about cats and dogs may have helped influence singing superstar Taylor Swift to endorse Kamala Harris for president immediately after the Harris/Trump debate, signing her endorsement statement “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” with a photograph of one of her three cats, named Benjamin Button.
(Beth Clifton collage)
From the Donner Party to racist rumors
Historically, some immigrant groups, some Native Americans, and quite a few explorers, pioneers, miners, and soldiers of European descent have eaten dogs and cats in times of duress, including members of the Donner Party, who also practiced cannibalism when stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846-1847.
But verified cases of dog and/or cat-eating in the U.S. since the mid-19th century have been surpassingly few, and except in Hawaii, where alleged native Hawaiian cockfighters have also occasionally been associated with dog-eating, have almost always been associated with illegal drug-induced derangement.
That has not stopped the racist rumor mill, which victimized restaurants in the Koreatown district of Los Angeles several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. Purported “dog bones” retrieved from trash cans turned out to be from goats.
Toto & Dorothy see the twister, from film The Wizard of Oz. (1939).
Overbrook, Kansas
The whole town of Overbrook, Kansas, became a target for nasty calls and emails in October 2013, reported Beccy Tanner of the Wichita Eagle, “after the National Report, a spoof website, published a story claiming the Osage County town had been hosting a dog meat festival since 1992.”
The National Report claimed the “dog meat festival,” a complete fabrication using photographs from other places, was begun by Vietnamese immigrants.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Fresno, California
Terry Tang of Associated Press reported on January 3, 2024 about how a false allegation about serving dog meat caused Love & Thai restaurant owner David Rasavong, of Fresno, California, to relocate.
“His earlier restaurant had only been open for seven months,” wrote Tang, “when a so-called animal welfare crusader in May 2023 implied on social media that a pit bull tied up at an unconnected home next door was going to be on the menu.”
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
The “baseless accusation grounded in a racist stereotype about Asian food using dog meat brought a six-month barrage of harassment so heated that Rasavong, 41, closed down its previous location over fears for his family’s safety,” Tang recounted.
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The post “Run Spot Run” from Trump/Vance bogus claims about dog & cat eating appeared first on Animals 24-7.
