The Decibel - How Trump’s pet-eating lie became emblematic of the election

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Donald Trump’s path to victory hinged on seven swing states. He won five decisively, and is leading in the final two. Republicans now control the Senate, are on track to control the House, and for the first time since 2004, a Republican president won the popular vote, too.Immigration was one of the key issues among Trump voters — 37 per cent saw it as the most important issue in the election. It was also one of Trump’s biggest talking points at rallies, and crucially, at the September debate with Kamala Harris. His notorious line about immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, lit up his supporters — and incited many of them to descend upon the town in droves.Shannon Proudfoot is a feature writer for the Globe, and she went to Springfield in the days leading up to the election. She’s on the show to talk about the Springfield she got to know – behind all the hype – and how the story of Springfield can help us understand how the issue of immigration played out among voters across the country.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before. And frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There's never been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond. Donald Trump not only won the 2024 U.S. election, he won decisively. The race hinged on seven swing states. Trump won five of them, including the largest, Pennsylvania. And he's leading in the final two, where votes are still being counted. Trump is on track to win the popular vote as well. Republicans also got a

majority in the Senate and, as it stands now, could take the House of Representatives too. On Wednesday afternoon, Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris conceded the race. While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign. Harris also said there would be a peaceful transfer of power. One of the biggest issues that Americans voted on this election was immigration, especially among Republicans. 37% of Trump voters considered immigration to be the most important issue, according to the Associated Press. The day I take office, the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins.

Trump talked a lot about immigration in his campaign. During the debate with Harris, he made a false claim about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. And all of a sudden, the small city of Springfield was thrust into the spotlight. Shannon Proudfoot is a feature writer for The Globe, and she went to Springfield to see what it was like on Election Day. She'll explain how the story of Springfield became a national conversation, and what it can tell us about how the issue of immigration played out with voters in this election. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Shannon, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Thanks for having me. I just want to start by asking, why did you want to go to Springfield, Ohio specifically? Yeah, so it felt really right to me to be there for election day because that city, in my mind, has really become sort of an accidental main character in this presidential race. Through no fault of their own, they did not particularly enjoy the experience. They basically became a mascot of some of the sort of big culture and policy wars of the race. And they really attracted just an insane amount of negative attention and quite frightening stuff. And so I wanted to go

sort of see the real city in more normal circumstances. And of course, you're referring to the comments made during now President-elect Trump during that debate. And we're going to kind of talk about those comments about eating pets in a minute. It's quite a thing to unpack. Yeah, there's a lot to discuss there. But I just want to kind of go back to this idea of the town Springfield itself and what you wanted to do while you were there. Can you just tell us a little bit about Springfield? Like, what is it like as a place? Yeah, it's really quite pretty. It is smaller. It feels smaller than I thought it would. It's about 58,000 people. And

I grew up in a city about, you know, 10,000 people bigger than that. So I sort of thought I knew the scale of it, but the downtown is really quite compact. It has been in decline over the course of about 50 years, sort of slow, gradual post-industrial decline, which is a really common story in the Rust Belt in that part of the US. So you can see downtown, there are these sort of blanked out, you know, storefronts and buildings that aren't in great repair, where you can see the signs. Most people sort of say about 10 years ago was kind of the nadir of where Springfield was in terms of economic and social decline and the kind of the signs of that you see on a street. But you can also see really interesting and appealing signs of renewal.

You can see new restaurants and stores going in. I found the city to just have an astonishing array of festivals and events, like on a scale that I'm not used to. If you had a Canadian city of an equivalent size, it seems to have a really active cultural and philanthropic sector. And it kind of felt like as I spent three days there talking to everyone I could, it felt like there were about 200 people in town who ran everything and just like pitched in and worked together and just made things happen.

So it's actually quite a pretty place and very Americana, like a very classic American city of that size. And I understand you were there kind of a couple days before election day and on election day itself. So what was the mood like in town? Monday and into Tuesday felt very quiet. It felt, if you can say this about a city, kind of watchful and waiting and very calm, which I think was a big relief to people who live there because, as we will get into in a few minutes, there has been a lot of very not calm things happening there over the last two months. And so you can sort of see the remnants of this. There was a Springfield Police Department car, like an SUV, parked on the sidewalk right directly in front of City Hall.

And there was a temporary security camera erected on a big pole nearby. So you can sort of see the leftovers of the really, really overheated, frightening, stressful period that happened about two months ago. And election day itself and even the day before was just very quiet. I even drove around on election night trying to find watch parties, people gathered, and there was nothing. We should talk about the what has been happening in this town for the last couple months, as you mentioned. So I think in order to really understand this, Shannon, let's go back to when Springfield actually first came into national focus.

This was after Trump's remarks about Haitian immigrants in the debate against Harris back in September. Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there. Where did that idea come from, Shannon? So it's a bit convoluted. If you don't mind, I'll back up a couple steps before that.

So I mentioned the decline of Springfield in this long, gradual period of, you know, manufacturing jobs dwindling, all the economic kind of erosion that goes on around that, then the brain drain, your young people leave, all that stuff. Classic story we know about a lot of places. So a number of years ago, Springfield had managed to attract a few new employers in town or had sort of turned the ship around in a way, but they were finding they didn't have enough people to fill the jobs. So at a certain point, your economic growth becomes hampered by who's already there. And at some point, it's a little bit amorphous as these things are. Haitian immigrants started to come in. They were drawn in part, I think, initially by some social services in town where it was a very

deliberate kind of going out to seek people who might want to live there and take jobs. And then a lot of Haitian immigrants came in. The best estimates for the city is 12 to 15,000 in Clark County around Springfield. And so for a city of 58,000, that's really, really significant. Oh, yeah, that's probably close to a quarter or something. I think that's about right. So you can imagine how that both places demand on city services changes the face of your city quite literally changes the feel of it the happy side effect of that was that there were people to fill jobs and companies as a result were growing you know manufacturing facilities were talking about adding second shift third shift like all

of a sudden growth became possible at the same time there were legitimate and are legitimate challenges with that. Healthcare and schools were really taxed. I mean, one very obvious thing is these are all Haitian Creole speakers. They're not English speakers. So all of a sudden, quite a small city with small budget needed translators at its healthcare facilities and in its schools. The stat, I think they went from around 2018, they had about 200 English as a second language learners in their school program. And within a few years, that went up to over 1000. So you can imagine, again, a small place with small budgets trying to absorb that and accommodate. The other obvious thing that

happened is housing got more expensive and more scarce. And that sort of sounds like it was a snowball effect. There were both large numbers of newcomers coming in, primarily renting. And then you had outside investors who smelled a way to make money and bought up houses that were available to rent them out. Because instead of renting to a family, you could rent to say six or eight Haitians who would sort of almost have like a boarding house idea and would pay you more money. The other thing that I think is material to what comes next, which we're going to get to, is you had people getting COVID benefits. So just like we had in Canada, when everything shut down for the pandemic, you had a certain amount of

financial benefits that people were just they were just getting as a matter of course, up until about 2022. And then around that time, so right around the time when the Haitian population hit critical mass, people started having to reapply for those benefits, and they were being weaned off. And more than one person I talked to, and this makes perfect intuitive human sense if you think about it, thought I used to be getting money to help me afford my life. And now I'm not. And I'm looking around at my city and what's different here? It's all of these Haitians. So then you had the way people do. You had rumors spreading. You had this sense of scarcity of I'm getting a raw deal. I can't afford my life. We all know that inflation has been pinching people all over the

place and governments have been bearing the brunt of that. But in Springfield, you had this very pointed reaction to it where people thought there were newcomers who were somehow getting benefits. They weren't. And there were quite sort of crazy rumors that sprung up around this. Like at one point, there was a rumor that car dealerships were giving away free cars to Haitian immigrants, which like, I don't even know what the mechanism or impulse for that would be. But this is the level of rumor you're talking about when people are frustrated and they feel like they're getting a raw deal and someone who's new and maybe doesn't quote unquote belong is getting something they don't have. So then, again, I think this is a human nature thing. And it's also a social media thing in the worst possible way. There was sort of this

convoluted thing where someone reported and it was something like tertiary at the level of like, my friend's sister's daughter or cousin had a cat go missing, a pet cat. And this snowballed online the way things do into this idea that the cat had gone missing. This got conflated with, there was a video that went viral out of another city, another Ohio city. So a totally separate thing. So this is a really interesting kind of forensic reconstruction of how rumors go in the internet age of a woman in pretty profound mental health crisis attacking and eating a cat and there was a video and somehow these things got shoved together and the story became pets in Springfield are going missing and it must be the Haitian migrants who are eating them.

Okay so this kind of became like an online thing where these rumors are kind of being put together then and conflated. Exactly and people talking themselves. And I don't think it was mainstream, but it was an expression of the frustration people were feeling. And then you had some people suggesting that ducks and geese in the parks had gone missing or somebody had seen someone that they identified as being Haitian walking across a park holding a dead goose by the neck. And so then the idea became they're also attacking and eating these animals. And separately, but related, as we'll see in the

next stage, city leadership sent a letter to state and federal leadership, including Ohio Senator, now Vice Presidential-elect J.D. Vance, saying, hey, we have a ton of newcomers coming into this city. We're really stressed by it. Can we please have some financial support to accommodate this? So what happened was that letter came to J.D. Vance's attention. And we all know J.D. Vance is a very online politician. He's of that generation. And he caught wind also of the rumors about, you know, supposed cat eating and goose eating and shoved them together into a tweet the night before the presidential debate and tweeted that he had been raising concerns for months about migrants. I think he put it overrunning and causing chaos in Springfield. And now there are reports of people's pets going missing and being eaten. And do we know, did Vance understand that that was kind of a

conflation or do we know if he believed this or not? Yeah. So the reports are that his people contacted Springfield officials, like someone in his camp, and were told this is not true. It did not happen. And off he went anyway. And this achieved next level exposure. The very following night, President Trump was debating Kamala Harris. And in the middle of the debate said, they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, the people who came into Springfield. And it all just exploded. We'll be back in a moment. Okay, so when he made those comments, people really started to pay attention across the country and other countries too, right? Because a lot of us were listening to that debate. How did all of this, though, play out on the ground in this they kind of knew this was going to go viral, I guess, in the worst possible way. And so what ended up happening was, I mean, all of the world's media descended. I actually

think that city of Springfield has dealt really impressively with the communications piece of this. They were really out front with press conferences, with very clear information on the city website. They did a really, really good job considering that they would never have had any reason to be prepared for this level of media attention. So the media world descended, but that was sort of the most benevolent version of it. You had white supremacist groups, neo-Nazi groups coming into town in rented vans, like meeting up in a park outside of town and unloading in the middle of town and running around to do demonstrations and protests. You had city officials getting death threats. They had police guarding their houses and their families.

There were something like 30 bomb threats, like every day, their schools, their hospital, municipal buildings, businesses were being closed down and evacuated. So I spoke to the mayor, who is also the funeral director, because being mayor is essentially a side gig or a service job for him. He makes $15,000 a year and still has a day job as the city's funeral director or one of them. And he said that he was told by police investigating this, that there's essentially like threat bots, like there's programs that go out trolling the internet for points of conflict. And then all the bomb threats they were getting were via email. And so it's almost like someone has built bot programs to send in automated bomb threats,

which that is quite a thing to contemplate about where we are as humanity. So I think it would be hard to overstate the level of disruption and stress, fear, money, even like money. I don't think it's a small thing to mention, like how much money the state and the city had to spend. They had the governor sent state troopers in to try to keep things calm and safe. They've installed metal detectors inside City Hall. So again, not to be at all patronizing, but you can imagine a city this size to have the world descend and then the heat of the political moment and how this was wrapped up with immigration, with racism, with economic anxiety.

Like I almost picture it like like a swarm of bees that just like formed itself into an arrow and just dove at Springfield. So from what you're saying, Shannon, it sounds like there was there was a lot of impact on this city of Springfield based on Trump's comments that he made in that debate. How have Haitians in Springfield dealt with all of this? You can imagine the anxiety, the stress of it. And also to be clear, just to back up a step, before this all exploded kind of globally and certainly nationally across the U.S., there were tensions over things that are not necessarily lies or hateful within Springfield. There were concerns. There have been concerns about driving safety. The sheriff's office, the county sheriff's office, have been doing sort of driving blitzes because in a lot of cases,

Haitians come, they haven't had formal driving school, they're adjusting to North American roads. It sounds like there have been some legitimate hiccups there. So it sort of almost feels like things were going on two tracks where the Haitian community was feeling just enormously stressed and targeted by all the hype on this from the outside, the intensity, but also trying to deal with the concerns of the Springfield residents that they live among. And so you can see these community groups would come to the meetings and talk about how they're working on trying to line up their community with driving lessons or they're trying to start English language schools. One of them talked about this is really innovative. They have a Haitian radio program and they're using it to try to talk about driving safety tips.

And they take pains to say, you know, this doesn't substitute for driving lessons, but we're trying to sort of help people acclimatize in that way. So some of the ways that people in this city then were trying to address these legitimate concerns about kind of people interacting. Yeah, because there are some legitimate concerns and it would be foolish and unfair to dismiss those. So I think that the Haitian community and the organizations that serve them have sort of taken the track of trying to be helpful, trying to be useful and pragmatic and address the concerns people are bringing forward.

Because you can imagine if you are a large population that's come in and, you know, they were drawn in for the same reason Springfield residents like it. Good quality of life, affordable, and there's jobs. They want to integrate successfully. And so there seems to be a lot of thoughtfulness about how to do that and how to address some of the concerns. Let's talk about the election itself then, Shannon. I just want to first ask, do we know Haitians in Springfield, do we know how much of that population would have actually been eligible to vote in this election? So most of them would not be just because of the hoops they have to jump through with citizenship. They're primarily in the U.S. And this is another I mean, it's a fact check talking point, but it's relevant.

They are not here illegally. They're here on a program called TPS, which basically recognizes that Haiti can be a very dangerous place. And it's basically humanitarian grounds for allowing people to to immigrate. It's temporary to start with. But yeah, the upshot is most of them would not have been able to vote because they would not be at that process in citizenship. Okay. And Ohio, the state voted Republican, which is expected. That usually does now. Trump got about 55% of the vote in the election. Harris got around 44%. So Shannon, when you were talking to people in Springfield who did vote Republican, who voted for Trump, I wonder, was immigration an issue that seemed to really matter to them?

Yeah, it was interesting. I spent Election Day, I was first at a polling station in a slightly more well-off, more white area of town. I talked to, I think, half a dozen people there and every one of them said they were voting Republican. But interestingly, every one of them also expressed some amount of dismay over the lies that have been told about their city. Now, it's hard to know when you're talking to people. You know, I think a lot of people have brought up is that they don't want to be labeled as hateful for raising concerns. So it's hard to tell how people are calibrating what they're talking about. But that cognitive dissonance, to be honest, was sort of interesting and a bit hard to wrap my head around that people would talk about how devastating it had been for their city to be the target of these lies and how they didn't like it. But they also raised plenty of concerns about a large population of newcomers and what it's doing to their city. And they voted

Republican anyway. I think it's worth noting. So Clark County, Springfield is the seat of that county and makes up about half the population of the county. Clark County voted about 60% Republican in 2020. And I just looked this morning, they're still counting, but it's about 64%. So the Republican vote actually went up there. So that tells us something about how when something is a hyper-local issue and it blows up in the worst and biggest possible way on a national level, it does not affect the vote in an obvious way. Like people were not, they were not upset enough about it to switch. They were not punishing the Republicans. There are bigger currents going on here, I think. Yeah. What about the other side of this, Shannon? Democrats who voted in Springfield,

what did you hear from them? Yeah. So when I went to the second polling station, it was in a less well-off, less white neighborhood. And their people were largely Democrats. And it's just two different views of the world. People there also were dismay complaints about the Haitian community more likely to be very overtly, you know, welcoming, talk about, you know, they've been through a lot. That's why they're here in the first place. But I don't know. I don't know what to make of that. I guess, you know, why would Springfield be independent of bigger trend lines we have seen animating this election, I guess, is my takeaway. Just the last few minutes here, Shannon, before I let you go, I'm wondering how a second Trump

presidency might affect places like Springfield when it comes to immigration in particular. So, of course, Donald Trump will be sworn in as president early next year. What has he said he will do in regards to immigration? So there has been a pretty, a very strong, overt, loud, close the borders and kick out people who shouldn't be here rhetoric from his campaign. He has talked about mass deportations. It seems like that has been a huge point of his appeal for people who voted for him. And this interestingly mirrors what I heard and saw in Springfield on a small level. I came to think that like the complaints people were having, whether they were, I guess I'm passing value judgment, but whether they were legitimate, thoughtful complaints that weren't, didn't seem motivated by, you know, hate or xenophobia or whatever, or whether they were more kind of conspiracy minded. What I heard over and over was this idea of scarcity, that there's not enough to go around. There's like a pie and someone else is getting the pie slice that should be mine. And I think that is very much one of the things we saw playing out in the national race.

And that's where immigration and economic pain overlap. And so Trump was very strongly speaking to that idea, the idea that you native born Americans or naturalized Americans are getting a raw deal and there's these invaders coming in. So he has talked about mass deportations and that sort of understandably enough and logically enough is the biggest immediate worry for both the Haitian community, people who are trying to support them and advocate for them in Springfield. The mass deportations, I just want to be clear though, he's usually talking about undocumented illegal immigrants when he's saying that.

Is that right? I think so. But as with Trump always, the question is, what exactly does he mean? What will he follow through on? I think what becomes the most operative thing is just the chaos and the unpredictability. And I can understand how if you were a newcomer in that country and you feel at all precarious, I'm not sure you would slice and dice who he's talking about. It's just this feeling of a lot of the rhetoric of his campaign

has been about outsiders who shouldn't be here and how we need to correct that. And so it's not like it's a clear policy path that people are worried about. It's just a really big looming question mark of what does this mean? Will he follow through? I mean, I would argue that's often one of the mitigating factors with Trump's various, you know, threats and projects is he doesn't have a great attention span. There tends to be a lot of chaos around, we saw last time around his administration. Question this time is they're more ready for it. And he has this kind of machinery around him, like the people engineering the Project 2025 roadmap, who seem more well equipped to follow through on things.

So I guess the question is, what do they view as their true priorities and what are they going to pursue once they're back in power? Shannon, always great talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here on such a busy week. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'mica ram and wilms our producers are madeline white michal stein and ali graham david crosby edits the show adrian chung is our senior producer and matt franer is our managing editor thanks so much for listening and i'll talk to you soon