They Didn't "Fall" for Anything
The GOP goes all-in on fake immigrants-killing-cats story.
Completely fake AI generated image that went viral on right-wing media yesterday.
Historians who want to understand what America was like on September 10, 2024, might want to start here: Less than two months before the presidential election, one of the nation’s leading political parties fully embraced the fake imagery of an utterly fake story.
And there were cats and ducks, because we live in very stupid times.
Happy debate Tuesday.1.
To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. You may disagree with me from time to time (and I expect you will, because I’m not promising you a safe space here). But I’ll always try to give it to you straight. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
As Politico reports, “Sen. JD VANCE (R-Ohio) seems to have fallen for a viral right-wing story about undocumented Haitian immigrants eating cats, ducks and geese in Springfield, Ohio, raising questions about misinformation in Vance’s online ecosystem.”
This morning, Vance — that well-known champion of cats — doubled down on the fake story. He admitted that: “It's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
But facts be damned, as he urged his supporters to keep pushing the lies.
Vance, however, is hardly alone. The Haitians-are-eating cats meme was seized upon by all the usual suspects — Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Elon Musk, the Trump campaign, and even the official account of the House Judiciary Committee GOP — who also “fell” for the bogus tale.
Ah, but as Bill Kristol noted, “They didn’t ‘fall for’ anything. They eagerly embraced a fake story. Why?”
There’s no puzzle, mystery, or enigma here. The racism, nativism, xenophobia, and fearmongering are, after all, the point. The actual facts are more or less irrelevant.
There was no subtlety in the raw, atavistic imagery of the Malaysia-based right-wing troll Ian Miles Cheong — a former contributor to RT, the Russian state-backed media company —who shared the bogus story with his 1.1 million followers.
The crude racism aside (for the moment), nearly everything about the story was bullshit.
The story (like so many MAGA myths) appears to have originated in a Facebook post that cited as evidence someone’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend.”
There was an incident with a cat. But it occurred hundreds of miles away from Springfield, Ohio — in Canton.
The woman who allegedly killed the cat was not a recent Haitian immigrant. She was, in fact, a registered voter, which suggests she has been here for some time — before the Biden presidency.
Local police quickly debunked whole lurid tale. Via Futurism:
As the Springfield News-Sun reported earlier today, Springfield police have denied the validity of the Facebook-shared rumor, telling the newspaper that the allegations of animal theft by immigrants are "not something that's on our radar right now."
Cheong's baseless claim about the horror story in Canton was also quickly debunked. As the Daily Dot points out, no media reports about the incident noted that the accused cat-eater, a 27-year-old Canton resident named Allexis Ferrell, was a Haitian immigrant — not even Fox News' writeup. And as other social media users were quick to rebut, a standard internet search reveals that Ferrell has been in the country since at least before the Biden administration.
How crazy was the story? And what does it say about the worm-eaten degeneracy of the GOP mind circa 2024?
That insane story spread like wildfire thanks to posts like this one from Senator Ted Cruz (T-TX), who shared this image of two kittens saying please vote for Trump so Hatian immigrants don’t eat us. Elon Musk shared this screengrab of Bart and Lisa Simpson mourning their cat with the caption, ‘Ohio right now.’ Of course, Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance piled on accusing, quote, ‘Haitian illegal immigrants of causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.’
Now, eventually, the conspiracy made its way all the way to the official Trump campaign account.
If my tone hasn’t made this clear, this is a complete lie. Don’t take it from me. This is a statement given to NBC news from the Springfield police force.
‘There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community..”
The Springfield PD noted that 175 miles away from there, there was reportedly a bizarre incident of one woman who was charged with cruelty to companion animals for allegedly killing and eating a cat. There is no evidence she is an immigrant and she is now living in Springfield and that crazy story hardly warrants a claim that Vice President Harris and immigrants are out to kill your pets.
Her conclusion: “Not only is this right-wing conspiracy theory totally false and completely xenophobic but it’s not helping the perception out there that J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, and the rest of their party are plain weird.”
By the way, for a more balanced report — pre-cat hysteria — check out this NYT story from last week. As the story suggests, Vance and the GOP have been looking for a way to exploit anxieties over immigrants and alleged immigrant crime.
The cat story was simply this week’s convenient cudgel. Next week, they’ll find something else. But the message will be the same, won’t it?
Nota Bene:
David Frum: Trump Promises a ‘Bloody Story’
“In Colorado, they’re so brazen, they’re taking over sections of the state,” [Trump] claimed, presumably alluding to reports of gang activity in an apartment building in a Denver suburb. “And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story. They should never have been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”
What did Trump mean by bloody story? He often fantasizes about unleashing state violence against groups and people he dislikes….
Trump traffics in yearnings for punishment of people he regards as outsiders and inferiors. They will suffer, they will shed blood, they will pay—and somehow their pain and their loss will elevate and empower him and those who support him. It’s never true, but for a moment it feels good. What more vivid form of power is there than the power to inflict pain?
**
Mark Leibovich: Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump
The party that allegedly reveres the Constitution is going all in on someone who has called for its termination. A party that cherishes freedom is willing to cede authority to a candidate who says he would be a dictator on his first day in office. A party that supposedly venerates law and order is re-upping with an actual felon. A party whose rank and file overwhelmingly wants Russia to defeat Ukraine believes that Biden stole the 2020 election, and that Trump’s legal shambles are entirely a Democratic plot. This is now a party whose standard-bearer has not been endorsed by any former Republican president or nominee, or even his own vice president, who barely escaped death by hanging the last time. And to what end, any of it?
Or maybe the dissonance doesn’t matter. Trump can do as he pleased, as he predicted. “Well, I think we’ve had very weak people,” he said in 2015. “I look at some of the people that are running, and I think they’re not strong people.” I remember hearing that as bombast at the time, the kind of casual dismissals Trump tosses around. In retrospect, though, Trump was prospecting, sizing up the Republican “leaders” he would be competing against. If nothing else, Trump has a keen eye for finding soft targets: pushovers he can bully, rules he can flout, entire political parties he can raze and remake in his image. He would roll over them.
No cats. But we have dogs.
Baby Eli with his Blue Dog.
**
Baby Auggie with his big brother, Moses.
**
Eli and Auggie yesterday.
Historians will also note that this was the same day as the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. We’ll leave the punditizing to later. But, I did provide MSNBC Daily with a some short preview thoughts:
Because Joe Biden’s debate performance was so historically disastrous, people forget how genuinely awful Trump was. He lied incessantly, blustered, and got lost in his own gibberish. If anything, he’s gotten worse since then; and now he faces a far more formidable opponent in Kamala Harris.
This is her challenge: she has to be the grownup in the room while calling out his lies, his threats, and his insults -- without being dragged down into the Trumpian muck. If she does, she will have turned the corner in the race.
Two philosophies to live by. One: Treat others the way you wish to be treated (every religion boiled down to a sentence). Second: Try to be the person your dog thinks you are!
I literally feel sick. I pray there are enough “normal” people out there who will (finally) consider this a bridge too far. I refuse to believe that Americans will elect a group of such obviously sick, twisted and deranged individuals to lead their government and represent their nation.