The Trump Campaign’s Haitian Migrant Lies Are A Dangerous New Low

Trump and Vance spun a known lie into the “truth,” and that's terrifying.

Credit: ABC News/CNN

We all saw it: Donald Trump’s unhinged elevation of a fringe online rumor about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio into the national conversation during last week’s debate.

Predictably, in the wake of that moment, the false rumor spread and metastasized leading Trump’s followers to call in bomb threats, shut down buildings including schools and hospitals, and put a target on the community of Springfield, Ohio. This is classic Trump, the stochastic terrorist.

Here at The Big Picture, we have been raising the alarm about Donald Trump’s use of stochastic terror to demonize his political foes and signal to his followers that violence is an appropriate response when dealing with those who Trump targets as his enemies.

Jay Kuo defined the term:

“Stochastic terrorism” is defined as “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” This kind of terrorism isn’t covered under any criminal laws in the United States because we give it a pass under freedom of speech. But that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t seek to limit it where we can, especially on big, private social media platforms.

Now, once again, we are confronted with Trump’s brand of political terror as we witness him, his running mate J.D. Vance, and the right-wing MAGA ecosystem spread dangerous lies about Haitian migrants.

In a way, this is Donald Trump’s tired old playbook turned up to eleven. He has gotten everyone in his orbit to double down on the attacks, and predictably it is having real-world ramifications that, thankfully do not include actual violence. Yet.

But what is perhaps most disturbing in this iteration of Trump’s terror campaign is the unapologetic denial of truth and the bizarre acknowledgment that making up stories is perfectly justified, even if it puts people in danger. To the Trump campaign, the fact that the claims are not true literally doesn’t matter.

In this piece, I’ll take a look at the origins of the Trump-Vance lie about Haitian migrants, how officials in Ohio, including Republicans, are trying to tamp down the backlash they’re experiencing, and how this time, the right-wing’s insistence that truth doesn’t matter signals a step even closer to the authoritarian worldview that Trump hopes to use to run this country were he to win in November.

How It Started…

The viral online rumor all began with a post by Springfield, Ohio resident Erika Lee to the Springfield Ohio Crime And Information Facebook Group warning of Haitians stealing and eating “our beloved pets.”

This post appears to conflate two stories. One is an actual news story about a Canton, Ohio woman arrested for killing and eating a cat. Not only is this woman not from Springfield, but she is not from Haiti. She is American. 

The second story concerns rumors about Haitian immigrants killing local ducks and geese, which the Neo-Nazi group Blood Pride has taken credit for amplifying. Is anyone surprised?

While Lee’s post has since been deleted, the damage was done. On September 5, a conservative X user posted a screenshot to her followers.

On September 6, the story was then picked up by the End Wokeness X account, which has 3 million followers, and seemed to go viral from there.

On September 8, MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk took the story and announced to his 3.4 million followers that "residents of Springfield, OH are reporting that Haitians are eating their family pets."

This was then picked up by JD Vance on September 9.

It was at this point that the City of Springfield first weighed in, clarifying that

"there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community."

But it didn’t stop Elon Musk from meming the lie:

Trump continued the drumbeat the next day on Truth Social:

And then, despite the fact that JD Vance acknowledged on X that morning that “It's possible…that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” Trump still used the platform of the debate stage that evening to spread the rumor as though it were fact.

In the days since the right-wing made the lie go viral, Erika Lee has expressed regret that her initial post “just exploded,” insisting that she is “not a racist.” Additionally, the “neighbor” she cited in her post has been identified as Springfield resident Kimberly Newton, who, according to NewsGuard has disavowed any first-hand knowledge of the events as well.

In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage. 

“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.” 

But for Trump, Vance, and their MAGA movement, none of that matters. Whether the story is true or not is completely irrelevant.

How It’s Going…

As we all recall, right after Donald Trump spread the lie during last Tuesday’s debate, moderator David Muir fact-checked Trump in real time, saying:

“I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

Trump pushed back, insisting that “People are on television saying the dog was eaten by the people that went there.” Which of course doesn’t make it true. Because for Trump, not only is the story’s truth irrelevant, but he knew—and in fact was counting on the fact—that his supporters would take his words both literally and seriously, and inflict real-world harm. This is what makes it terrorism after all.

To underscore this point, and despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump continued to spread it during a Thursday event in Arizona.

In the days since, Springfield, Ohio has been inundated with bomb threats. At a press conference on Monday, Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, confirmed that schools in and around Springfield had received 33 bomb threats since late last week.

Per CNN:

Students at Simon Kenton and Kenwood Elementary Schools were evacuated “to an alternate district location” Monday based on information district officials received from the city’s police, the Springfield City School District said in a release.

“These are the fifth and sixth SCSD buildings to be targeted by recent threats within the last week,” the district said.

Beginning today, DeWine has deployed 36 state troopers to be present at all 17 of the Springfield City School District buildings.

The troopers will sweep all school buildings before classes start and will remain on campus to provide security throughout the day and after dismissal, he said.

In addition, two area hospitals had to close due to threats they received, and two local colleges, Wittenberg University and Clark State College, have moved to remote learning as a result of threats lobbed at the institutions as recently as yesterday, including “emailed threats of a bombing and a campus shooting that targeted ‘members of the Haitian community.’”

Trump’s comrades in arms the Proud Boys were even spotted marching in Springfield, which was confirmed by Springfield police in a statement to CNN.

Yesterday, the City Of Springfield’s Facebook page announced that, because of ongoing threats, they would be canceling their annual CultureFest celebration, described as an “event that celebrates diversity, arts and local culture.”

Vance Doubles Down…

As with most false rumors, this one began with a kernel of truth. According to ABC News, it’s estimated that 12,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to Clark County, Ohio drawn by work opportunities and a low cost of living. While the city of Springfield has conceded that “the rapid rise in population has strained housing, health care and school resources,” the migrants are in the country legally under Temporary Protected Status, which is “a temporary immigration status granted to foreign nationals from countries that are experiencing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other emergencies.”

Governor DeWine has not only confirmed the falseness of the rumors, but has come to the defense of the Haitian community that found refuge in Ohio.

“Haitians are — culturally, my wife, Fran, and I have seen this when we’ve been down in Haiti — education is prized,” he added. “So when you look at all of these things, people who want to work, people who value their kids, who value education, you know, these are positive influences on our community in Springfield, and any comment about that otherwise, I think, is hurtful and is not helpful to the city of Springfield and the people of Springfield.”

But that reality was an inconvenient one for JD Vance, who has been trying to demonize the community for months, even in a Senate Banking committee hearing in which he sought to blame immigration for the U.S. housing crisis—a premise that has been thoroughly debunked.

Then, according to Talking Points Memo, at the National Conservatism conference the day after the hearing: 

Vance let loose a stream of inflammatory statements, accusing “illegals” of having “overwhelmed” the city.  

Vance even went so far as to claim on X on September 10 that “a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant.” This was a purposeful distortion of a tragic event where 11-year-old Aiden Clark died in a school bus crash in which 23 others were injured. A Haitian immigrant was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and vehicular homicide for the crash. 

But as the boy’s father made clear during a meeting of the Springfield City Commission the very day of Vance’s tweet:

"To clear the air, my son Aiden Clark was not murdered; he was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti. This tragedy is felt all over the community, the state and even the nation, but don't spin this towards hate.”

He went on:

“Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose.”

“This needs to stop now. I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies.”

“The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces, but even that’s not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate.”

“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,”

Even area police are trying to shame Trump and Vance into cooling down their incendiary rhetoric.

Vance’s response in the wake of these attempts to shame him has been to double down and blame the media, even acknowledging what has always been the case for Trump: that the truth of the allegations is irrelevant and that there is value in spreading them regardless.

The first time Vance appeared to both acknowledge that the story might be false and that he was still justified in amplifying it was in the spin room after the September 10 debate, when Vance told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins:

“Whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in…”

“I think it’s interesting that the media didn’t care…until we turned it into a meme about cats… If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we’re going to keep doing it.”

…And Says The Quiet Part Out Loud

Then on September 15, Vance went even further in an interview with Dana Bash.

After refusing to admit the rumors are false, he admitted he and Trump were “creating stories” in an effort to defend spreading the twisted lie.

“The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana.”

Bash almost couldn’t believe what she heard and sought to pin Vance down.

“You just said that you’re creating the story.”

“What’s that Dana?”

“You just said that this is a story that you created.”

“Yes!”

“So the eating dogs and cats thing is not accurate.”

“I said that we are creating a story meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it…We created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story…”

While JD Vance tried to dig himself out of the hole he created with his “create stories” line, he was really just saying the quiet part out loud.

Vance vocalized the justification for the right wing’s tactic of weaponizing disinformation in the interest of driving a narrative and, as is so often the case with Trump, demonizing their political foes to cause terror.

It is an extension of the authoritarian project Trump began in 2015 when he launched his first run for president. Back then, Trump discredited the media in the eyes of his supporters by calling them the “enemy of the people,” a line that echoes dictators “from Stalin to Mao, and Nazi propagandists.”

In 2024, after the debate, the right spread the lie that the debate moderators were in cahoots with Harris and that she was fed the questions in advance. How better to discredit David Muir’s fact-check of the “eating the pets” lie?

Trump routinely convinces his supporters that what they see and hear with their own eyes and ears is not in fact the truth, and that they should listen to only him for the real truth.

Trump’s follow up to his debate lie was his insistence that the Haitian immigrants are “illegal” (they are not) and his doubling down on the false claim that they are “walking off with the town’s geese…and even walking off with their pets” (they are not.)

This is right out of the authoritarian playbook, chapter and verse. 

Vance, of course, wasn’t supposed to just come right out and admit that they just “create stories,” but here we are.

It is now clear that not only is Vance on board with this anti-democratic and post-truth project, but the whole right-wing media ecosystem is as well. This is what Trump has wrought. This is the exhausting era on which Kamala Harris has pledged to turn the page. And we the voters should all do everything in our power to make sure she does just that.

Because if Trump wins, the way he, Vance and their MAGA faithful have spread this dangerous “eating the pets” lie, and then welcomed the chaos and threats that followed, is just a taste of what is to come from a second Trump term.