Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on CNN to explain the "real" reason former President Donald Trump and Republicans have spread hateful rumors about Haitian immigrants "eating cats" after Trump made outrageous, racist, and patently false claims during Tuesday night's presidential debate.
Trump promoted the unfounded allegation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were consuming household pets in response to a question about immigration:
"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. 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."
Moderator David Muir swiftly corrected Trump when he repeated the debunked claim that gained traction online after right-wing social media accounts spread the unfounded story, despite no actual evidence supporting it. Muir pointed out that officials in Springfield, Ohio, including the city manager, confirmed no such incidents of cat-eating had occurred.
Buttigieg noted that Trump's claims are designed to distract from his very real failures as a politician "because he cannot afford for us to be talking about his record."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
He said:
“This is a strategy, and there’s even more to it than demonizing immigrants, although that’s obviously part of what he’s doing.This is a strategy to get us talking about the latest crazy thing that he did, whatever urban legend he amplifies right now. It’s about people eating cats or geese or whatever, because he cannot afford for us to be talking about his record.”
“He doesn’t want us talking about the fact that we lost manufacturing jobs on his watch, even before COVID, which is why the United Auto Workers are against him. He doesn’t want us talking about the fact that his main economic policy promise he actually kept was to cut taxes for the rich."
"He doesn’t want us talking about how he demolished the right to choose in this country, that he’s the reason that even IVF [in vitro fertilization] could be banned in many places in this country."
"The last thing he wants us to do is to talk about his record or his agenda so what he wants us to talk about is whatever crazy nonsense he can thrust into the ceter of the media and the internet conversation, which this week is about immigrants eating cats or dogs or geese or whatever."
Buttigieg noted that Trump's distraction technique "isn't harmless" because it's "affecting this community and contributing to the bigger picture of demonizing immigrants." He said he "doesn't give [Trump] credit for much" but noted that Trump questioned Vice President Kamala Harris's racial heritage and invited conspiracy theorist and 9/11 "truther" Laura Loomer to a September 11 remembrance by design.
He concluded:
“The purpose is to do something so outrageous that we have to talk about it, that journalists have to go in, if for no other reason than to run it down and debunk it when it’s false, and to try to suck up all the oxygen into that so that we’re not talking about his profoundly unpopular policy agenda, Project 2025, and all of the failures of his actual time in office."
Many concurred with his assessment.
On Monday, Springfield police said that they had received no reports of pets being stolen and eaten, following a viral social media post originally from a Springfield Facebook group, according to the Springfield News-Sun. The post claimed that a neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat, only to find it hanging at a Haitian neighbor’s home, allegedly being prepared for a meal. Immigrants were also falsely accused of eating ducks and geese at local parks.
That same day, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, spread the false story across social media, just after the Trump campaign released a statement titled, “Kamala Migrants Ravage Ohio City — And It’s Coming to Your City Next,” which falsely claimed that “20,000 Haitian migrants were dumped in the city.”
Vance later conceded the possibility “all of these rumors will turn out to be false" but nonetheless urged "fellow patriots" not to let "the crybabies in the media dissuade you."
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