The Meme That Could Win an Election

During the debate (yes that one), Donald Trump said that illegal immigrants from Haiti were grabbing cats and dogs off the streets of Springfield, Ohio and eating them. A moderator haughtily told the former president that the vaunted reporting staff of ABC News had checked with the city manager, who said, that’s not true. David Muir smirked. Kamala Harris laughed. Almost as if it had been rehearsed.

The regime media couldn’t pile on fast enough, mocking Trump.

NPR, which for some reason taxpayers are still funding, called these accusations “bizarre falsehoods” and “vitriolic rhetoric toward immigrants,” adding, “There’s a long history of accusing immigrants of eating cats and dogs.” Subtext: MAGA is racist against immigrants. Maybe the left-wing NPR should check with the left-wing Humane Society International, which reports on its website that “an estimated 30 million dogs are killed for human consumption each year across Asia in a brutal trade that involves terrible cruelty to animals and often, criminal activity, with 10-20 million slaughtered in China alone.” Newsweek wrote a whole story from the point of view of the immigrants, saying the rumor of ducks kidnapped from ponds sparked fear among them, and left them considering leaving, their American dreams quashed.

Soon a sign appeared at Snyder’s Park Peanut Pond, saying “Please Do Not Eat the Ducks.” The National Trails Parks and Recreation District commented that the sign looked very official but they hadn’t approved it. I guess the giveaway was “please.” Anyway, like diligent bureaucrats everywhere, they removed the sign.

The Springfield Police Division insisted it had received no reports of pets being stolen and eaten. But the citizens of Springfield, Ohio (population: 60,000, up from 40K after Biden-Harris made a mockery of our borders) kept claiming their pets were disappearing. Soon, videos appeared on X of cats being eaten or dumped in bags for roasting. And a second-generation Haitian-American explained the voodoo culture, and why people should stop mocking Trump and start addressing the problem.

Onetime Democrat presidential candidate Marianne Williamson warned her party that “continuing to dump on Trump because of the ‘eating cats’ issue will create blowback on Nov. 5.” In a post on X she has since deleted, Williamson wrote that Haitian voodoo is in fact real, and “to dismiss the story mocking Trump’s plea for the people of Springfield could backfire at the ballot box.”

The sad thing about this uproar is that since the criminal uptick in illegal immigration, which allowed some 20 million unvetted visitors into our country, scores of young women and girls have been brutally raped and murdered at the hands of illegal aliens. Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old in Houston. Rachel Morin, the 37-year-old mother of five in Maryland, her brutalized remains stuffed in a culvert by an El Salvadoran accused of murder in his home country. Lanken Riley, a nursing student at Augusta University who went for a run and was raped and murdered by a Venezuelan linked to the Tren de Aragua gang. Remember them. Border Czar Kamala Harris never has never called their families, never said their names aloud.

For his part, Trump tried to highlight these heinous crimes in a visit to the border in Arizona recently, where he gave the mic to grieving families. But that got nowhere near the attention of the missing pets, or the memes that followed. For one simple reason — the story was believable, and also, we love our pets.

On Friday, musicians joined the conversation, dubbing Trump’s accusation into songs.

These are the soundbites and slogans that define campaigns. Yes they highlight a problem in Springfield, Ohio, a town overwhelmed with immigrants. But also they tug at the heartstrings, bring a laugh to a cloudy day, remind us of our better instincts.

And, sometimes, they win elections.