Cat-eating Haitians — how easy is it to uncover Trump’s post-truth world?
“Cat-eating Haitians” – the most recent buzzworthy but baseless claim amplified by the Trump campaign, sparked hyper-salivation amongst MAGA fans, and disbelief in the rest of us. While researching this latest xenophobic rumour, a Springfield, Ohio police report revealed how easily Trump’s post-truth world can be debunked.
In 2016, the same year Trump successfully campaigned to become the 45th POTUS, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year was “post-truth” and is defined as: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
Following the U.S. presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, on 10 September, where the former president asserted that immigrants were eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio, the conservative group Judicial Watch, whose president, Tom Fitton, serves as an informal adviser to Trump, posted a segment of a police report on their Facebook page, seemingly in support of these baseless claims. The report included allegations from Springfield resident Anna Kilgore, who suspected her Haitian neighbours had chopped up her cat, implying that they had eaten it.
Two police officers, M. Lykins and J. Dykes responded to Kilgore’s call on 28 August 2024: “she thinks her neighbours stole her cat and chopped it up and have it in their backyard. […] The neighbors are Haitian and she doesn’t know who they are. […] Lykins spoke to Anna. She advised on 8-24-24, her cat went missing. Has not been seen since. She found ‘meat’ in the backyard. Thinks it was from her cat. No bones or fur around the ‘meat’.”
“She suspects the Haitian neighbours. No evidence to support this claim. Unknown if the meat she had was actually cat meat? Anna had collected the meat and put it in her fridge in hopes to get it cremated.”
Despite the report being filled with speculative assertions—where the claimant “thinks”, “suspects”, and admits to having “no evidence”, Judicial Watch still shared it on their Facebook page, presenting it as factual. The post subsequently garnered thousands of likes as well as xenophobic comments condemning Haitians.
According to an investigation by the WSJ on 9 September, a staff member of Vance called Ohio City Hall to ask if the claims about the Haitians could be verified. In an interview, the City Manager said: “He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumours true of pets being taken and eaten?” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
These unsubstantiated claims, however, did not stop JD Vance and Trump from perpetuating the false, hate-filled rhetoric against Haitians, building on other baseless accusations about Haitians eating pets and even other animals in Ohio.
When I first came across the police report on Judicial Watch I emailed the Springfield Police to verify the document’s authenticity. The same day, I received confirmation that the police report of 28 August was indeed genuine.
They also sent me another police report dated 30 August, which I have not found anywhere else online, which stated: “She [Kilgore] found some type of skin in the trash. It is in the grocery bag. Some type of animal bones/skin.”
This report refers to Kilgore’s comments in the earlier report of 28 August, where she claimed to have found unidentified meat in her neighbour’s backyard, suspected it was her cat and stored it in her fridge hoping to have it cremated.
Kilgore’s missing cat, Ms Sassy, was actually under her feet the entire time, hiding in the basement, rather than being digested. However, what no one could verify for sure is whether Ms Sassy – living up to her name with her impudent nature – is a Trump supporter who intentionally hid away to create the myth against Haitians.
In the end, Kilgore’s Haitian neighbours graciously accepted her apology after she stated, “I wish I could take it all back,” which is a different story to Vance and Trump who are still peddling the lie.
“As we have seen time and time again Trump relies on post truth as his strategy to boost his support. The US and the world have endured falsehoods such as Trump’s COVID-19 misinformation, suggesting people inject bleach, the birther conspiracy and his loud claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.”
Trump’s post-truth claims incited unrest, culminating in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Over 1,100 individuals have been charged, and Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, though the Senate acquitted him in 2021.
For Trump supporters, it would seem rather than taking responsibility for their own behaviour and lives it is easier to find someone else to blame for their misfortunes. And as Kilgore’s accusations proved once again, any story that “appeals to emotion and personal belief” will suffice, no matter how baseless.
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