If you’ve watched Donald Trump demonize immigrants to fuel his political rise over the last decade, the former president’s insistence that immigrants are abducting the cats and dogs of Americans and eating them shouldn’t come as a surprise.
It probably also shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republican lawmakers are not only indifferent to the former president making these claims; they largely support him spreading the conspiracy.
In interviews with more than two dozen GOP lawmakers this week, Republicans brushed off Trump’s allegation that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. They didn’t care that Trump’s claims during a presidential debate were, predictably, not true. They weren’t worried that, by blurting out “they’re eating the dogs,” he was elevating racist rumors — the most cited of which relies on a neighbor’s daughter’s friend — to the national stage.
They told NOTUS Trump was simply sharing something he believed to be true, that he was doing important work by raising the broader issue of immigration and that they weren’t concerned about the ramifications his rhetoric could have for Haitians living in their states.
Some even added their own allegations.
“Apparently there’s pictures of it,” Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said of Haitians eating cats. “The fact that you’re saying it’s not happening, it’s not true.”
Steube mentioned a woman — an American citizen who was arrested recently for allegedly killing and eating a cat during an apparent mental breakdown — as evidence for his claims. When told she was an American, Steube was undeterred.
“Well, apparently there’s reports that there are. In Ohio. Haitians are doing that,” he told NOTUS. “It’s just interesting that, like, you have news reporters that are taking one guy’s — some city manager or something — when there’s reports.”
Asked where he was getting these reports, Steube said, “From all over.”
He said he would have his staff send over the reports. And his team forwarded NOTUS a newsletter from a right-wing blog, which linked to a story alleging animal sacrifices are happening in New York — unconnected to Haitians in Springfield — and a local news story about the American woman who had been arrested. The blog falsely described her as “a hungry Ohio immigrant.”
“Pictures of Jamaicans and Haitians doing pagan sacrifices,” Steube told NOTUS, incorrectly summarizing the right-wing blog post. “In Ohio.”
Rep. Brian Mast was also dismissive. “The point of it is that we have a major problem with illegal immigration,” he told NOTUS.
Mast’s state has a large Haitian population, but he didn’t sound worried about how any of his own constituents might be affected by Trump spreading rumors and racist stereotypes.
“It’s not a stereotype that people eat different animals. I mean, it’s just a fact of the matter,” Mast said. “You go to different markets in different parts of the world, and you’re going to find horse on the menu, you’re going to find dog on the menu, you’re going to find cat on the menu.”
People in Florida often eat “chicken of the trees,” he said, referring to lizards.
Still, even if cuisines differ, Trump was saying something else entirely. He was saying immigrants are stealing household pets to eat. Pressed whether it was appropriate for the former president to make a claim like that, Mast sidestepped.
“I’d say this,” Mast said. “They’re stealing the taxpayer dollars.”
Haitians have received temporary protected status to live and work in the United States because of the dangers they face back home. As many as 15,000 Haitians have moved to Springfield in recent years, saying it’s where they found job opportunities or that they followed family members who were already living there. Some Haitians have said since the debate that they now feel unsafe in the community. Springfield’s city hall was also evacuated this week after receiving a bomb threat, according to local officials.
Other GOP lawmakers didn’t want to talk about Trump’s claims at all. “I don’t respond to quotes,” Rep. John Duarte said. (When pressed, he told NOTUS he “wouldn’t have said it.”)
Sens. Joni Ernst and Shelley Moore Capito both said they didn’t have a comment. And Sen. Jerry Moran simply told NOTUS he didn’t personally know anything about people eating cats or dogs.
Sen. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, cracked a joke. “Well, I’m allergic to cats,” he said. “So I don’t worry about any of that.”
Rep. Kevin Hern also seemed to find the situation amusing. “That was kind of wild, wasn’t it?” he said.
Hern did find it “interesting” that the debate moderators “readily had something from the city manager” to fact-check Trump on the spot. And he wasn’t the only Republican to complain about how the ABC News moderators told Trump during the debate that the allegation was false.
“I thought that was entirely inappropriate in a debate for the moderator to suddenly start debating back and forth,” Sen. James Lankford said.
Lankford didn’t have any similar criticism of Trump making the debunked claims in the first place.
“I don’t actually know if it’s true or not,” he told NOTUS. “I have no idea. I’ve never even checked into it. Obviously, I don’t talk about immigration the same way.”
Trump’s allies have pointed to a YouTube video — a 30-minute compilation of on-the-street interviews that decidedly does not show evidence of people eating household pets, but does include numerous racist insults hurled at Haitians — as proof of their claims.
Right-wing activists have also gone so far as to offer $5,000 bounties for evidence that Haitian immigrants are, in fact, eating cats. (After soliciting corroboration on social media, one of them realized he might be incentivizing people to eat previously uneaten cats. He requested in a follow-up post that people not do that.)
Of all the GOP lawmakers who spoke with NOTUS, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania was the closest to offering criticism of Trump.
“If it turns out to be false, then there should be an explanation as to why that false statement was made,” he told NOTUS. “It’s very bizarre for anything like that to be mentioned in a debate.”
“It’s utterly ridiculous,” he added. “It’s such a consequential election, and this is what we’re talking about.”
Still, many of Fitzpatrick’s GOP colleagues were entirely comfortable making partisan stump speeches based on Trump’s comments.
Sen. John Barrasso didn’t even try to answer if what Trump said was appropriate, executing an effortless campaign pivot instead. “What Kamala Harris has done by ignoring the border and welcoming people here to the United States is completely against what so many Americans think should be done with the border,” he said.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, one of the chief architects of an immigration bill that would have provided legal residency for some undocumented migrants, said foreign gang members had wrought violence in American communities. “I was more taken aback by the vice president refusing to answer any questions,” he told NOTUS.
And Sen. Josh Hawley pointed to immigrant-related crimes in Missouri. “We’ve seen stabbings, we’ve seen carjackings, we’ve seen homicides,” he said.
But if those issues are important to discuss alongside immigration, why didn’t Trump bring that up instead of claiming they are eating pets? Doesn’t his insistence on fake issues distract from the ones Hawley wants to discuss?
“Immigration and the border is a serious, serious issue for all the reasons I just raised, and I think, frankly, the more the former president talks about that, the better,” Hawley told NOTUS. “I just think he’s reflecting where voters are on that. So I’m not going to grade him.”
Not every GOP senator was so forgiving of Trump’s terms of debate for immigration. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina acknowledged that echoing the false claims might undermine the former president’s campaign message.
“Instead of talking about what the president chose last night, he should talk about the real danger,” Tillis said of unlawful border crossings.
For Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, though, nothing Trump says actually matters in this election.
NOTUS couldn’t even get through the question: Donald Trump said last night that immigrants — before Braun interjected.
“He says a lot of stuff, and he’s said so many things over the years, and if you want to internalize that in a way that you think is any different from the past, my point is that it doesn’t make much difference,” he said. “That doesn’t mean you want to use that style or approach, but in this case, it’s going to be so easy to see how good things were pre-Covid.”
But he said immigrants are eating people’s dogs and cats.
“I’m not going to comment on that,” Braun said.
He eventually conceded that Trump’s rhetoric wasn’t how he would have gone about discussing immigration — “That’s not probably the approach I would have used” — but he said he didn’t think the exchange would make any difference in the 2024 race.
“There’s been other varieties of that in the past, and people see through it because they’re so upset about the economy, inflation and the border,” he said.
Most GOP senators found similar ways to defend Trump. They suggested his comments were more about the sentiment of concern over immigration. For Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s conspiracy theory was “part of a broader argument.”
“When you have a mass influx of migrants in any community, particularly a city the size of Springfield, it’s going to have impacts,” Rubio told reporters.
Of Haitians eating cats, he said, “We’ve never had a problem with that in Florida.” And Rubio wasn’t worried that Trump’s claims would affect the considerable Haitian population in his state.
“The Haitian community in South Florida, in particular, is well-ingrained in the fabric of our community,” he said. “We all know each other. It’s not going to be an issue in Florida.”
Rubio’s Florida colleague, Sen. Rick Scott, wouldn’t answer whether Trump’s allegations were appropriate. But, he told reporters as he made his way through the Senate basement, “I’m from an immigration state.”
Scott then gestured to his guest, GOP Virginia Senate candidate Hung Cao, who was visiting the Capitol that day.
“Hung, you’re an immigrant,” Scott said.
So, how did Cao feel about Trump’s comments?
“I mean, you need to ask the mayor of Springfield. I think he’s going to tell you what the truth is,” Cao told NOTUS. “Here’s what I say: This election is about one thing. Ask yourselves this: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? If you say you are, then you’re probably an illegal alien.”
But did he find Trump’s rhetoric inappropriate in any way?
“President Trump is President Trump,” Cao said. “And, you know, everybody admires him for that.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.