A lot came out of the 2024 presidential debate on Sept. 10, as candidates expanded on their past and future policies, with Vice President Kamala Harris opening with her plan for extended tax cuts for people below the poverty line and Former President Donald Trump reiterating economic and crime statistics from his presidency. But the one key thing most people took away from the debate was a remark from Trump, stating that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating house pets, a blatantly false and extremely dangerous claim to make. This inflammatory statement has not only been dangerous for the citizens of Springfield, Ohio, but could have nationwide consequences.

These baseless rumors started when Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, stated in a Facebook post that she saw a cat “hanging from a branch like you’d do a deer for butchering.” Lee claimed that her Haitian neighbors were roasting the cat to eat, when in fact, the cat was stuck in one of her neighbor’s basements, making this post a baseless, racist claim. However, right-wing pundits and politicians, more specifically Ohio Senator and Vice Presidental Nominee JD Vance, ran with it. Vance stated in an interview after the presidential debate that he has to “create stories so that the American people care,” further proving that the claims from the Republican party are not to be trusted, especially this one.

The comment about Haitian immigrants is no different than any other of Trump’s claims, as we’ve seen similar instances in prior circumstances. At the Jan. 6, insurrection attempt, he told the militia group, Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by.”  During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, he cited racist rhetoric and threatened to use the National Guard to “quickly solve the problem for them.”

 Baseless claims like the ones about Springfield are nothing new. This is an old hurtful stereotype that Americans have used for centuries now. The diets and cultural foods of immigrant groups in America have been disparaged for centuries now, from the bean-heavy diet of Central American cuisine leading to the formation of a slur to the same dog-eating stereotypes against Asian Americans that originated before the American Civil War. 

While these rumors about immigrants eating dogs and taking over towns are not new, their effects are. Recently, the citizens of Springfield have been greatly affected by these rumors as frequent bomb threats have shut down public events, militias have been roaming the streets, and some families in the community have pulled their children from schools all in fear of retaliation. These threats have created so much potential danger that state troopers have been assigned to escort children to school. 

All this chaos is due to claims the former president made on a whim based on manufactured and false information. But this is not irregular. This is a pattern of hatred and violence incited by Trump, and this cycle will only continue.

This statement about Haitian immigrants spells disaster for the future of the country as a whole. From Trump’s repeated references to a “dictatorship on day one,” to his deep connections to Project 2025, an inflammatory compilation of planned legislature and administrative plans that focuses on the stripping of rights for marginalized communities across the board. 

These happenings all point to one thing:  A cycle of misinformation and unjust calls to action that will only continue. Over the past eight years, evidence has shown that Trump will make comments calling for the absolution of rights and privileges that many people need to live, all under the guise that he was never wrong.