“The country is being lost!” presidential candidate Donald Trump warned us during his recent debate with Kamala Harris. “We’re failing nation.” In other words, America is going to the dogs. But wait! It gets worse. “In Springfield, they’re eating dogs!” Trump growled. “They’re eating cats. They’re eating…the pets of the people that live there. And this is what is happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
Should we, in Iowa, be concerned for our pets? You know what they say: As goes Springfield, Ohio, so goes the country. But who are “they,” the shadowy pet-eaters? It’s Haitian immigrants, those ravenous Haitians! Like swarms of locusts. Apparently, they’ll eat anything. Of course, this is laughably untrue and during the debate, Kamala couldn’t help but laugh out loud when she heard it.
The rumor started when Springfield resident Erika Lee posted on Facebook that some woman saw her dead cat hanging on a tree about to be butchered by a Haitian who lived there. Ms. Lee later admitted she heard the story fourth hand from a neighbor’s daughter, whom she never even met. Nevertheless, the story went viral on X and it was picked up by the Neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe and J.D. Vance who only later acknowledged it might not be true.
But Trump has never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. Even after the report was debunked, he continues to double-down on the tale of dog-eaters, expanding it to include ducks and geese, poached from local ponds and city parks, devoured by Haitian immigrants like marauding zombies in search of human brains. To be fair, the old shark-and-battery story wasn’t pulling in the MAGA crowds like it used to. He needed some new material.
Of all the dark omens, why did Trump pick dog-eating immigrants as a sign of the Apocalypse?
Although it is widely known that Trump himself hates dogs–he refers to women and disloyal employees as “dogs”— somewhere in the dim recesses of his three-chambered, reptilian heart, there lies the knowledge that people love their dogs. And we don’t want them eaten.
And yet, humans have a long history of eating dogs. The ancient Aztecs bred dogs for food. Some Native American tribes once considered dog a ritual delicacy. Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1803-1806) consumed a total of 193 dogs and favored it above any other meat. Lewis remarked in his journal, “I prefer it to lean venison or elk and it is very superior to the horse in any state.” (High praise, indeed.) To this day, China eats 10 to 20 million dogs annually. It was only until 2018, that it became illegal in the US, as part of the Farm Bill, to slaughter dogs and cats for food.
It’s sad that Trump believes we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Trump was the first president since William McKinley (1897-1901) to not have a dog. As more and more of the former president’s associates abandon him to his madness and desperation, he might recall the famous advice of Harry S. Truman, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”