Donald Trump brought up a false claim that Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating the family pets of Ohio residents during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, continuing to insist that the bizarre conspiracy theory was true even after a debate moderator fact-checked him.
Trump’s unhinged rant came in response to the question “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Although he opened by discussing tariffs, the former president soon veered wildly off-topic after he invoked illegal immigration.
“A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it,” he insisted. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
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His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, appeared to scoff, saying, “Oh, come on.”
Characterizing these supposed pet-eating migrants the people “she and Biden let into our country,” Trump added, “We have to get them out and we have to get them out fast.”
Trump and his allies have seized upon the conspiracy theory—which mainly targets Haitian immigrants—in recent days, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), X owner Elon Musk, and the House Judiciary GOP amplifying it with the help of cat memes.
“President Trump will deport migrants who eat pets,” a Trump campaign account said on social media on Monday. “Kamala Harris will send them to your town next. Make your choice, America.”
The theory appears to have originated from a handful of viral social media posts, including a Facebook commenter who said that a cat belonging to a friend of a neighbor’s daughter had been found hanging from a tree.
There is no truth to the claims, however. A spokesperson for the city of Springfield told CBS News on Tuesday that there had been “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused” by immigrants.
The city spokesperson’s quote was repeated verbatim onstage at the debate Tuesday by moderator David Muir. He ignored the fact-check, however, later saying that he’d seen “people on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’
“And maybe that’s a good thing to say, for a city manager,” he added.
Springfield’s police department told the Springfield-News Sun that it had received no reports related to the matter.
The White House similarly pushed back on the “dangerous” claims earlier on Tuesday.
“This kind of misinformation is dangerous,” national security spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday. “Because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is. And they might act on that kind of misinformation and act on it in a way where somebody can get hurt so it needs to stop.”
