Biden Denounces Trump for Attacking Haitian Immigrants With False Pet-Eating Stories

Joe Biden lashed out at Donald Trump, though not by name, on Friday, for giving voice to the false rumor that dogs and cats are being eaten by Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

“I want to, today, take a moment to say something like—so many Americans, like Karine, as you pointed out, a proud Haitian American—a community that’s under attack in our country right now. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place in America,” Biden said during an event at the White House celebrating Black excellence. “This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop!” The president’s comments came shortly after remarks by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who referenced being Haitian American. Speaking as “the first Black, openly queer White House press secretary and, I’ve got to add, a proud Haitian American,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden: “I can tell you that representation matters to him. Our voices matter to him. Our perspectives matter to him and our success and our community matters to him.”

Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have been promoting a debunked claim that Haitian American immigrants in Ohio have abducted and eaten people’s pets. During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Trump declared: “A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating—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.”

Earlier in the week, Vance spread the claim on X, writing, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” In an interview following the debate, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed the Ohio senator about the false claims, asking him, “why push something that’s not true?” Vance doubled down, responding, “First of all, city officials have not said it’s not true, they’ve said they don’t have all the evidence.… We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground, Kaitlan, who—both firsthand and secondhand reports—saying this stuff is happening, so they very clearly…think that it is happening. And I think that it’s important for journalists to actually get on the ground and uncover this for themselves when you have a lot of people saying, ‘my pets are being abducted’ or ‘geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us.’”

As The Washington Post notes, “Members of the Haitian community in Springfield were granted temporary protected status in the United States after fleeing profound unrest and violence in their home country.” Since Trump, Vance, and others have spread the pets story, the rhetoric has escalated, and numerous buildings in Springfield—including its City Hall and an elementary school—were evacuated Thursday due to a bomb threat that included “hateful language” about the city’s immigrant population.

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