Former President Donald Trump, during Tuesday’s presidential debate, repeated a baseless and sensationalist claim about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and other pets.
"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," Trump said during an answer to a question about immigration. "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."
Trump's answer was among the most extraordinary of the first 30 minutes of the debate: a former U.S. president spreading an internet rumor — one labeled by some of his critics as racist — in front of an audience of millions of Americans. The comment illustrated the rapid spread of misinformation in today's media ecosystem.
David Muir, the ABC News anchor co-moderating the debate, immediately fact-checked Trump's claims, saying that the city manager in Springfield, Ohio, told the network there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured or abused by people in the city's immigrant community.
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Baseless rumors have spread on social media for days claiming that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Most of the rumors involve Springfield, which has a large number of Haitian immigrants, but police there released a statement Monday knocking down the stories and saying they hadn’t seen any documented examples.
“There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” the police said in a statement.
Republicans including Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, have pointed to the claims as evidence that immigrants are causing chaos. Vance, though, hedged in a statement on X earlier Tuesday, saying, “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”
The claims about pets were based in part on vague social media posts, including one fourth-hand story posted in a Facebook group devoted to local crime, as well as statements at public meetings, where residents spoke about violence against animals without providing evidence.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue repeated Tuesday that the city had no documented cases of immigrants eating pets.
“Rumors like these are taking away from the real issues such as housing concerns, resources needed for our schools and our overwhelmed health care system,” he said at a meeting of the city commission.
Rue said that one alleged case of someone attacking a cat — falsely attributed to a Haitian immigrant in Springfield — actually occurred 160 miles away in Canton, Ohio. And the defendant there charged with animal cruelty has no known connection to Haiti, according to The Canton Repository newspaper.
The topic of immigration took center stage at Tuesday’s city commission meeting in Springfield. At the meeting, resident Nathan Clark, whose 11-year-old son was killed last year when a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant struck his school bus, denounced Republican politicians who he said were using his deceased son Aiden as “a political tool” to fuel anti-immigrant hatred.
Immigration is a potent subject in the presidential face. In an NBC News poll in April, 22% of voters put immigration and the border as the most important issue facing the country, second only to inflation and the cost of living at 23%.
John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, denounced the claims about Haitians in Ohio as a dangerous conspiracy theory that could inspire anti-immigrant violence.
“There will be people that believe it no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is, and they might act on that kind of information and act on it in a way where somebody could get hurt,” Kirby told reporters Tuesday.
Trump's comments about pets was one of a variety of claims and allegations that drew from rumors and conspiracy theories.
In an exchange about immigration, Trump referenced false rumors about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado — claims that have been debunked by local officials while spreading widely on right-wing media channels.
Then, in a series of statements before the second commercial break, Trump alluded to conspiracy theories about the influence of foreign money on the Biden administration.
“You know, Biden doesn’t go after people because, supposedly, China paid millions of dollars,” he said. “He’s afraid to do it — between him and his son, they get all this money from Ukraine. They get all this money from all of these different countries. And then you wonder why is he so loyal to this one, that one, Ukraine, China? Why did he get $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? Why did she pay him $3.5 million? This is a crooked administration, and they’re selling our country down the tubes.”
But none of those claims appear to be grounded in fact. The most concrete point appears to be a debunked claim that Hunter Biden received $3.5 million from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow. The claim was included in a Republican report but without any evidence.
Daniel Arkin is a national reporter at NBC News.
David Ingram is a tech reporter for NBC News.
Jason Abbruzzese contributed.