"They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people who live there," Donald Trump said in his debate against Kamala Harris. Since then, the words have become a meme, a rallying cry, and they've turned Springfield, Ohio into a flashpoint for the debate over illegal immigration and the border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It's also become a song composed by a South African musician who performed it live this week in Germany with video images of Snowball and Santa's Little Helper, the cat and dog from The Simpsons, dancing.
Last night, these comments and the controversy surrounding them brought Vivek Ramaswamy to Springfield for a town hall. He wanted answers, so he let people speak, he took questions, he moderated arguments between Ohioans, of which he is one, and he tried to get to the bottom of what's really going on in Springfield, and by extension, the rest of the country. He didn't find an answer to the question of whether or not they're eating the dogs or the cats, but he did discover that as overwhelmed as the citizens of Springfield are by the foreign influx of people, they want to be good neighbors, they want to help. Standing in their way, however, are the language barrier, the drain on resources, and the fact that the immigrants really can't drive.
It was not the first time Trump's comments made news. On Sunday, the same argument prompted CNN's Dana Bash to hold an interview with JD Vance, where she essentially treated him like a hostile witness. She demanded to know why he was making "racist" claims against Haitians by saying they were eating pets. He replied that he was simply bringing the concerns of his constituents to light, as he is an Ohio senator, after all. The concerns he raised over eating pets were brought to him, he didn't make them up. Bash was so combative that Vance had to remind her that he was the one being interviewed and harkened back to the soft, easy, multiple-choice-answer interview she'd done with Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz. The Vance interview was only a few minutes shorter than that one.
However, whatever's happening to the pets, we do know what effect the talk about them is having on Springfield: it's shined a light on the small Ohio town, and one that by all accounts,the Springfielders don't particularly like. They feel they've been painted in a bad light—both by those claiming that Haitians were eating cats and by those claiming that Springfielders were complaining about Haitians eating cats. Turns out saying they're doing it is racist even if they're doing it.
But let's be honest; it would help to know if any pets were harmed in the making of this controversy. And so far, we don't know. At all. We just know that the Left doesn't want to talk about it. Witness Harris herself, who appeared bemused by Trump's assertion. "Get a load of this guy," her expression seemed to say. ABC debate moderator David Muir, whose ratings on his own show have tanked since the debate, by the way, rushed in to fact check Trump, citing beleaguered city manager Bryan Heck, who he said the network reached out to.
"I just want to clarify here," said Muir live on national television, "you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And 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 countered "The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager." He went on to say, "but the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there."
So again, is it true? Are cats and dogs and geese and ducks at risk of being eaten by foreigners with different cultural and culinary habits and norms than Ohioans? Is it not true and it's just racist to even think that this could be happening? So far, all we have is claims, which are swiftly "debunked"...by other claims. Videos circulating on social media allege cats were barbecued in Dayton. Other people said they were chickens, but they do look like cats, and Christopher Rufo, who circulated the video, said he spoke to eye witnesses and they said for sure that it was cats up on the grill. Yet a police report from a woman who said she thought her neighbors ate her missing cat was resolved when she found her cat in her own basement. Heck said the town followed up on 911 calls made about pets and geese and couldn't get in touch with most of the people who called in the first place.
But say, for the sake of argument, that it is happening. What should be done? Trump's answer is mass deportations, and Kamala has hammered him on that, saying it's not compassionate. Her administration's DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas agrees with that and says deportations are bad policy. But many of the Springfielders who showed up at Vivek's town hall didn't think it was crazy at all. The majority of Americans don't, either, per new polls.
Democrats' only answer to that is to keep telling us we're a nation of immigrants. And it's true, to an extent, that immigration has long been a tough issue in the US, going all the back to Ellis Island, which is practically a byword for the golden age of mass migration to the US. But there's a huge difference between the controlled immigration of that era, the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and what we're seeing today. Even on Ellis Island, immigrants were processed. The island had rules and restrictions, and while some such "rules" are myths—like the name changes, which never happened—some of them, like quarantining the migrants, were real.
And let's be clear; even in the days of Ellis Island, New York City felt overrun by the new arrivals. Bear in mind, this is despite the fact that, even at the height of that immigrant boom, 1907, only 1,004,756 passed through Ellis Island. Contrast that with 2023, when the number was over 2.4 million encounters at the southern border alone, and 3.2 million across the country overall. Which raises the question, how are we supposed to absorb all of these people and still maintain our national sovereignty?
Well, certainly, not with any help from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They came into office and essentially took a sledgehammer to the border, letting in all comers, and through so many different programs it's hard to keep track. The reason they installed refugee programs, temporary protected status programs, programs for unaccompanied minors and families, parole programs, "dreamer" programs, and asylum programs was so that they could say that these people are not illegal; that they have legal status. But the truth is it's a mass importation without limits and without any plans for how to integrate or assimilate all the new people into the US. In fact, Biden and Kamala probably think assimilation is racist.
Which brings me back to the charges of pet eating. Frankly, contrary to the narrative that the whole controversy is racist, let's be clear: assimilation is really what this whole controversy is about. The implicit question posed by these charges is essentially, "When people come to the US, should they become Americans and adopt our ways or should we change our culture and society to suit them?" Granted, there’s been an interplay over the years, but it's far from unreasonable for Americans to ask how, with over 2 million people coming in every year, we are supposed to maintain the fabric of our nation. Especially at a time when American culture has gone so global that now our concerns have become fodder for commentary, entertainment, and even songs from Germany to South Africa.
Which brings me back to the pet eating controversy, which has now truly gone global. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, for Springfield or for the United States. Ask yourself: did anyone care what Springfield was going through before the assertions of pet eating were uttered on the debate stage? I doubt it. Kamala didn't care. The media was paid not to care. No one even knew the city manager's name before all this happened. Which is why, if nothing else, we should be grateful that the controversy shined a light on the struggles of a community buckling under mass immigration. Whether pets, ducks, geese, dogs or cats are being eaten in Springfield, and whether they have been in the past, the fact is that America needs to reckon with the genuine cultural clashes that come with illegal immigration; clashes which, from Springfield to New York, are only deepening. In other words, the fate of the Springfield pets matters far less than the fate of Springfield's people, who clearly don't feel safe; in fact, they feel alienated from their own communities. The rest of the world might think that's a joke, but we Americans shouldn't. Cats and dogs aside, we have an obligation to take even the possibility of threats to our culture and our way of life seriously.
