WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
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NBC NEWS
Former President Donald Trump, during Tuesday’s presidential debate, repeated a baseless and sensationalist claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and other pets.
"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration. "They're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."
Trump's answer was among the most extraordinary of the first 30 minutes of the debate: a former U.S. president spreading an internet rumor — one labeled by some of his critics as racist — in front of an audience of millions of Americans. The comment illustrated the rapid spread of misinformation in today's media ecosystem.
David Muir, the ABC News anchor co-moderating the debate, immediately fact-checked Trump's claims, saying that the city manager in Springfield, Ohio, told the network there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured or abused by people in the city's immigrant community.
Baseless rumors have spread on social media for days claiming that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Most of the rumors involve Springfield, which has a large number of Haitian immigrants, but police there released a statement Monday knocking down the stories and saying they hadn’t seen any documented examples.
“There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the police said in a statement.
Republicans including Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, have pointed to the claims as evidence that immigrants are causing chaos. Vance, though, hedged in a statement on X earlier Tuesday, saying, “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
The claims about pets were based in part on vague social media posts, including one fourth-hand story posted in a Facebook group devoted to local crime, as well as statements at public meetings, where residents spoke about violence against animals without providing evidence.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue repeated Tuesday that the city had no documented cases of immigrants eating pets.
“Rumors like these are taking away from the real issues such as housing concerns, resources needed for our schools and our overwhelmed health care system,” he said at a meeting of the city commission.
Rue said that one alleged case of someone attacking a cat — falsely attributed to a Haitian immigrant in Springfield — actually occurred 160 miles away in Canton, Ohio. And the defendant there charged with animal cruelty has no known connection to Haiti, according to The Canton Repository newspaper.
