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Trump Supporters Flood Social Media With Viral Hoax About Migrants Eating Cats and Ducks

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump flooded Twitter with pictures of cats and ducks on Monday. What caused this sudden love of animals in a society known for its sadness and hatred of all things happy? It turns out they were responding to a racist hoax started on Facebook and spread by Trump associate JD Vance.

“Months ago, I raised the issue of illegal Haitian immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos throughout Springfield, Ohio,” Vance wrote on X Monday morning. “Reports show that people have been kidnapped and their animals eaten by people who should not be in this country. Where is the king of our border?”

Vance’s tweet has racked up 2 million views and counting at the time of writing.

What are these “reports” that Vance mentioned? It should come as no surprise that the reports are complete garbage cooked up on Facebook. An account called The Calvin Coolidge Project shared a screenshot of the Facebook post Sunday night, which helped fuel the hoax story the next day.

The Facebook post, which appears to be from a group in Springfield, Ohio, is one of those “friend of a friend” stories that just aren’t true:

A warning to all about our beloved pets and those around us!! My neighbor told me that her daughters friend lost her cat. He checked pages, archives, asked everywhere, etc. One day on his way home from work, as soon as he got out of his car, he looked towards the neighbor’s house, where the Haitian people live, and he saw his cat hanging from a branch, just like you. I would kill a deer, and they would carve it to eat. I was told that they do this to dogs, they did it in snyder park with ducks and geese, as I was told that last time by the Rangers and the police. Please keep an eye on these animals

A tweet sharing the Facebook post also features a picture of a boy holding a goose that is unrelated to the post but appears to be where the allegations that immigrants are killing and eating the ducks came from. As the Washington Post pointed out, the photo was not taken in Springfield and there is no evidence that the man is from Haiti or an immigrant.

Springfield police released a statement Monday morning saying they have had no reports of stolen pets being eaten. And while stupid lies and rumors about immigrants in the US doing strange things didn’t start with the invention of the Internet, social media has made it easy for these things to spread quickly.

There was a report of a 27-year-old woman from Canton, Ohio who allegedly killed and tried to eat part of a cat last month, according to Fox News. And many far-right activists linked to that story on Monday as proof of their stupid story. But there is no evidence that the woman is an immigrant from Haiti, despite what far-right activists insist. People just do the worst things sometimes.

Right-wing accounts are flooded with images of Trump’s AI rescuing ducks and cats, sometimes with weapons. It’s a common aesthetic choice that’s pretty funny given the fact that Trump is such a weak coward in real life.

Tech oligarch Elon Musk even contributed to the conversation on his social media platform X with a heart-filled emoji for one silly AI photo showing Trump hugging a duck and a cat.

Musk also wrote in another tweet “Vote for Kamala if you want this to happen in your area!” while quoting a video of Harris talking about immigration. Musk’s account quoted the tweet as falsely repeating that Haitians were destroying an Ohio town and “reportedly killing and eating people’s pets” while “Kamala Harris” “bragged about letting them overrun our country.” Just nasty and racist lies all around, obviously.

Trump’s online rapid response team on X, known as the Trump War Room, doubled down on the racism by saying, “President Trump will deport immigrants who eat pets. Kamala Harris will send them to your city next. Make your choice, America.”

It should come as no surprise that Trump and Vance are trying to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks. They beat in such a way that the Trump campaign did not come back when President Joe Biden was elected. Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 and Harris entered, immediately making up for the deficit that Biden faced against Trump in the election.

The race is now hot, and Harris is doing well in many battleground states, which is why Trump and Vance will try anything right now to defeat him. Racist memes about aliens who are going to eat your cat are probably the opening targets. When Harris’ running mate Tim Walz helped amplify the label of Vance and Trump as “weird,” Republicans didn’t know how to respond. A joke about Vance having sex with couches turned into a meme that Republicans on the Internet responded by trying to say that Walz must be drinking horse semen. By trying to answer a silly joke, they made it weird. Because they do.

There’s no telling how low they’ll go with the ridiculous lies as we get closer to election day on November 5. But you can bet it’s going to get weirder before it gets better.




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