Trump’s “Proof” of Migrants Eating Pets Turns Out to Be Totally Bogus
Donald Trump’s meager attempt to prove a group of immigrants had begun dining on their neighbors’ pets has predictably fallen apart.After Trump was brutally fact-checked during Tuesday’s presidential debate when he tried to baselessly claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating local pets, the former president took to Truth Social to provide his own so-called proof.What he was able to provide were blurry screenshots of one call report from the Clark County Communications Center, which had been obtained by the right-wing opinion blog The Federalist. The report detailed a call from August 26, during which a caller claimed that they had seen a group of people walking down the street carrying geese. The caller “said he could tell they were Haitian because he was within earshot of them to hear them speaking Haitian Creole,” according to the report. The identifying information on the report had been removed. The report was meant to justify Trump’s extreme claims on national television, but a closer examination of the facts—and testimony from the caller—shows that the right-wing hysterics are over basically nothing.Steven Monacelli, a freelance investigative reporter for The Texas Observer, decided to follow up on the report with the Clark County sheriff’s office. A clerk for the sheriff’s office passed along the original report, as well as a recording of the call. “At this time we have not found any other record concerning Haittians [sic] harvesting geese. At this time we have not found any record of Hattians eating pets,” the clerk wrote in an email, which Monacelli posted to X. Monacelli also spoke with the caller, whom he identified simply as “Toby” to protect his privacy. Monacelli detailed what he learned in a series of posts on X. Toby explained he was simply trying to report what was potentially illegal goose hunting, which requires a permit outside of goose-hunting season, which starts in September. Toby also pointed out that a viral photo of a man walking down the street holding a goose, which many on the right have cited when pushing this conspiracy, was from Columbus, Ohio, not Springfield. “I’m not trying to really be put on the news, famous or anything, I was just a citizen on his way to his orientation, and just happened to see that,” Toby explained. “I just made a report, that’s literally all I did.” When asked whether he had seen anything similar since making his initial report in August, Toby said, “No I haven’t.”Monacelli asked what Toby thought about the right-wing claims that there had been widespread pet abductions, to which Toby replied he “hadn’t seen any pictures, or anything like that myself. But then again, I’m not on social media.”
Donald Trump’s meager attempt to prove a group of immigrants had begun dining on their neighbors’ pets has predictably fallen apart.
After Trump was brutally fact-checked during Tuesday’s presidential debate when he tried to baselessly claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating local pets, the former president took to Truth Social to provide his own so-called proof.
What he was able to provide were blurry screenshots of one call report from the Clark County Communications Center, which had been obtained by the right-wing opinion blog The Federalist. The report detailed a call from August 26, during which a caller claimed that they had seen a group of people walking down the street carrying geese.
The caller “said he could tell they were Haitian because he was within earshot of them to hear them speaking Haitian Creole,” according to the report. The identifying information on the report had been removed.
The report was meant to justify Trump’s extreme claims on national television, but a closer examination of the facts—and testimony from the caller—shows that the right-wing hysterics are over basically nothing.
Steven Monacelli, a freelance investigative reporter for The Texas Observer, decided to follow up on the report with the Clark County sheriff’s office.
A clerk for the sheriff’s office passed along the original report, as well as a recording of the call. “At this time we have not found any other record concerning Haittians [sic] harvesting geese. At this time we have not found any record of Hattians eating pets,” the clerk wrote in an email, which Monacelli posted to X.
Monacelli also spoke with the caller, whom he identified simply as “Toby” to protect his privacy. Monacelli detailed what he learned in a series of posts on X.
Toby explained he was simply trying to report what was potentially illegal goose hunting, which requires a permit outside of goose-hunting season, which starts in September. Toby also pointed out that a viral photo of a man walking down the street holding a goose, which many on the right have cited when pushing this conspiracy, was from Columbus, Ohio, not Springfield.
“I’m not trying to really be put on the news, famous or anything, I was just a citizen on his way to his orientation, and just happened to see that,” Toby explained. “I just made a report, that’s literally all I did.”
When asked whether he had seen anything similar since making his initial report in August, Toby said, “No I haven’t.”
Monacelli asked what Toby thought about the right-wing claims that there had been widespread pet abductions, to which Toby replied he “hadn’t seen any pictures, or anything like that myself. But then again, I’m not on social media.”
