Photo: Alex Brandon/AP Photo
If you’ve followed Donald Trump’s recent antics, you know the chances of us getting out of his first debate with Kamala Harris without hearing about “the late great Hannibal Lecter” and the debunked story about migrants stealing people’s pets and eating them were pretty low. But the way these two topics came up was still something to behold.
Surprisingly, it was Harris who brought up the Silence of the Lambs villain. She referenced two classic unhinged Trump bits — Lecter and “windmills cause cancer” — while asserting that his MAGA rallies are all about self-indulgent rambling rather than proposing policies that will actually help people.
Her attack seemed to rattle Trump. A few minutes later, as he was ranting about crowd size, we got a fresh example of the bizarre exclamations you can see at a Trump rally. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs!” the former president shouted, referring to a city in Ohio.
Trump continued, “The people that come 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.”
Many viewers likely have no idea what Trump was talking about. But the too-online among us will recognize this as the right’s hot new racist hoax. On Monday, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, took to X to spread a debunked claim about Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, kidnapping residents’ cats (not dogs) and eating them, as NPR explains:
Vance, who represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, spread a debunked claim about Haitian migrants living in the city of Springfield, Ohio, on Monday, accusing them of abducting pets and eating them.
The claim, which local police say is baseless, was made by far-right activists, local Republicans and neo-Nazis before being picked up by Vance. A well-known advocate for the Haitian community says she received a wave of racist harassment in the aftermath of Vance’s post.
Vance made the claim as part of a political attack against Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. On the social media site X, Vance wrote, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
Debate moderator David Muir clearly came prepared for Trump to bring up false pet-eating claims. “ABC News did reach out to the city manager” in Springfield, Muir said. “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.”
Undeterred, Trump insisted that he’s “seen people on television” who say “my dog was taken and used for food.”
When invited to respond, Harris just said, “Talk about extreme!” and chuckled.
Trump has actually mostly moved on from the “late great Hannibal Lecter” since praising the fictional cannibal during his RNC acceptance speech. At its core, that riff is about vilifying migrants in the cadence of a joke, so perhaps the ridiculous dog-eating bit is a natural addition to his routine.
