They keep trying to validate their racist claims.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance tried to prove his baseless claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets by pointing to a police report from one resident in Springfield, Ohio, that alleged her cat may have been stolen by her Haitian neighbors.
How’s that going for them?
The Trump campaign is not backing down, though.
Trump: Democrats said please don’t call immigrants animals. I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals pic.twitter.com/yJ7fFHEUlh
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) April 2, 2024
I’m sorry to say that this is the very last time I’ll link to Snopes. They have a lengthy article straining to justify the statement that they’re animals
, because Trump was referring to illegal immigrants who committed crimes. I hate to tell you this, but those are human beings, too.
raven says
Well, technically they are animals.
So, am I. So, are you. We all are.
Waves to fellow chordates.
Yeah, I get what you mean though.
Comparing humans with nonhuman animals frequently insults nonhuman animals.
My cat would never vote for a Republican or call in a false police report.
Reginald Selkirk says
I hate the “double-down.” It is in no way a sign of strength to be unable to admit you were wrong.
The Central Park 5 are exonerated. Trump doesn’t seem to think so
birgerjohansson says
As a person who adopts homeless cats, I can confirm they have a talent for getting trapped in basements, garages and just about anything.
And it is very cat-like to trigger mayhem, so Miss Sassy is the most cat-like of all cats.
Your average cat will think “I wonder if this vase will bounce?”
Miss Sassy would think “I wonder if this flask of nitroglycerine will bounce?”
raven says
QFT.
When I first adopted my 3 year feral cat from down the road, one night he disappeared. I looked for hours and couldn’t find him. Thought, well he must have decided to go home or something happened to him. It was not a good night.
The next morning I opened up the garage and…he came running up to me, looking very relieved.
I carried him into the house.
This cat was electively mute. He had working vocal cords but never learned to say “meow”.
Raging Bee says
What, your cat never learned to say “hurry that dinner willya!” or “everything here is mine!”? I guess feral cats wouldn’t get a chance to say either of those…
Robert Westbrook says
Snopes has either begun to fear MAGA retaliation or they’ve been infiltrated by them. Either way they’ve gone downhill fast.
StevoR says
Of course Trump and the blatantly racist, stal e old lies are coming from and being defended by the best peopel – not. See :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-8/#comment-2236742
Yeah, I know which word I heard there and it wasn’t immigarnts, er., migrants..
Also yes, the sources for thsi shit are literal actual fucking nazis.
Akira MacKenzie says
They don’t care. The last episode of QAnon Anonymous quotes one of these assholes who admitted that the point was never about missing and eaten pets, it was to draw attention to a group that they think doesn’t belong in this country.
Same goes for Vance’s “If I have to make up a story” comment. They don’t care about facts. They care about the result.
Akira MacKenzie says
For those who don’t mind becoming suicidally depressed, here’s the episode:
https://youtu.be/Z50GEOgSQMg?si=jfjefDSKopuQTpFV
The creep I was talking about comes up at the 30:23 mark.
Autobot Silverwynde says
@4: I’m not surprised. Cats don’t meow at other cats; they meow at the big furless two legged cats. So if they haven’t been around the big furless cats, they don’t learn this behavior. (Fun fact: cat meows are similar to infant cries, which basically encourages people to take care of/give the cat what it wants.)
@6: Snopes was going downhill years ago. During some of the protests during the Trump regime, Snopes was happy to regurgitate whatever the cops said, even if the information was absolutely and verifiable false. They’ve given “Mixture” ratings to items that are absolutely true, or “Unproven” to items that are fact. The video footage of some of the cops letting in Jan 6th insurrectionists? Snopes said it was unproven. Most of the Facebook comments on that post were literally “Are you watching the same video?”
I dumped Snopes around six or seven years ago. It was getting bad then. I don’t want to see them now.
birgerjohansson says
Raven @ 4
Raging Bee @ 5
Kittens will communicate with their moms by meowing. Domesticated adult cats will keep on communicating with their human “adults” this way.
Feral cats will stop meowing as they go out in the world on their own and forget this form of communication.
StevoR says
Just seen this now on late night Aussie telly – Colbert interview – Rachel Maddow on th Trump-Vance nazi sourced eating pets lies – lasts 6 mins in total but relevant bit starts from 1 min 51 seconds mark. Her whole interview is well worth watching but that bit is partic relevant here & makes some good points.
Autobot Silverwynde says
@5: Some never learn. It’s something that develops with exposure to humans so in some cases, ferals don’t pick up on it.
To be honest, cats aren’t entirely domesticated. There’s a window during kittenhood where they can be domesticated and if you miss that, they will go feral. Cats honestly don’t need us to survive on their own. That’s why I hate the “Libertarians are housecats” bullshit. Cats are survivors. You wanna compare a Libertarian to anything, make it a freaking Chihuahua.
Jim Brady says
Raven @1 – I always think the Sapiens should be followed by (ha ha)! I prefer homo credulous – the ability to believe absolutely anything is our defining feature.
Tethys says
Shady Vance also admitted that he invented the story to pull media attention back to his boss. How dare they keep reporting on the surge of support for Harris/Walz?
Sadly for Shady, most Americans really don’t like him, his weird obsessions that seem to revolve around cats, or his typical edgelord behavior.
He is nothing but a bog standard misogynist who is being funded by the excreable Peter Theil, who has a whole clique of wealthy white male supremacists writing out blueprints for turning America into Galts Gulch, with a subplot from Handmaids Tale.
Akira MacKenzie says
@15
This week’s two-part episode of Behind the Bastards profiles Vance and Thiel’s favorite “philosopher,” Curtis Yarvin, aka “Mencius Moldbug,” father or the “Dark Enlightenment.”
Part One is here (Part Two isn’t up just yet): https://youtu.be/mYrPNvVhKLU?si=tCQiCPwizeTIouqq
shermanj says
Breaking News: http://theartsinarizona.org/alieneatscat600l.gif
Walter Solomon says
So much for toning down the rhetoric.
Bekenstein Bound says
The Haitians should refuse to accept Kilgore’s apology until she removes the Nazi insignias she’s displaying, throws them on a bonfire, and apologizes for supporting Nazis as well.
wolja says
PZ I know you don’t believe me but the hyperbole is giving the opposition whoever they are ammunition.
Simple fact free with much sarcasm, humour for you yanks, will have zero effect but my convince 03% of 300 million people to actually get out and vote. On an arrogant sarcastic old white non-racious mid-center man but even I can understand you can’t teach intelligence to slime molds unless you speak clearly.
I’m trying to be better and trying to speak clearer if it convinces enough people to vote to turf the carrot out let’s do it
You can sell stupid to anyone but you have to speak clearly to change their minds
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/victordominello_australia-has-a-population-of-27m-we-activity-7242646538563321857-Xifs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android
birgerjohansson says
If you doubt cats can get anywhere.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/ei1iX82TFspFCff7/
birgerjohansson says
J D Vance refuses to apologise
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_Pd-5qjd468
At the 8 minute mark Jimmy Kimmel adresses the “cat + Haitians” issue and notes that JD Vance has not apologised for lying. You know what that means? Now it is open season on J D Vance and his couch! And we get several sordid examples of what he has been doing.
KG says
StevoR@12,
That’s a good point Rachel Maddow makes (that Trump wants to change the subject, and when he does, he spews something so vile his opponents feel obliged to respond), but I think she misses another aspect – Trump and Vance specifically want people to be talking about immigration, where they know they have a polling advantage.
petesh says
@23: T & V (what the hell, let’s just call them TV, it makes sense) specifically want people to be talking about ILLEGAL immigration, especially by folks who neither look nor speak like them. And the more they can blur the legality, the better they like it.
KG says
petesh@24,
Ideally, yes. But any discussion of immigration is good for them, because it increases the salience of the topic, and close elections are mostly decided by salience – what the voters are thinking about. Changing voters’ opinions on a topic, specifically, which side is “better” on the issue, is a longer-term endeavour.
DanDare says
My cat has perfected “hello” as a word, which seems to be “hey, I’m here, notice me”.
He also is very good at dissappointment sounds, such as when he wants a door open and we don’t do it.
NitricAcid says
A few years ago, I was away, and my daughter was looking after my almost-completely-indoor cat. I got a frantic phone call from her, saying, “I let Fuzzbutt out on the front lawn, and I was watching him carefully, and I turned away fro a second, and now I can’t find him, and I’ve been looking for…oh, there he is.”
This is the same cat who went on vacation to a cousin’s house (due to a visit from my allergic father), and just vanished for two days. He was just sitting behind the dryer, enjoying the peace and quiet.
NitricAcid says
If I can’t find Fuzzbutt (name changed from privacy), he’s usually napping on a chair pushed under the kitchen table.