How JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH) and the Online Right Sabotaged Trump’s Debate

By Jonathan Chait, who’s been a New York political columnist since 2011. NY Magazine. Sept. 11, 2024

The worst moment of the presidential debate for Donald Trump was likely the point when he began ranting about the imagined epidemic of pets being kidnapped, murdered, and eaten. “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats, they are eating the pets of the people who live there,” he shouted wildly.

ABC moderator David Muir gently noted that the Springfield town manager reported nothing of the kind had taken place. “I’ve seen people on television,” Trump replied feebly. “The people on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’”

The term presidential has always been elastic, and in the Trump era, its meaning has been stretched out like a pair of pants worn around for a week by a man 20 pounds too heavy for them. Yet, even by the distended contemporary standards, Trump’s claim about the dogs was weird, ridiculous, and the opposite of presidential.

There is poetic justice here. Trump is the victim of the sealed-off information ecosystem that produced and sustained his political career.

The conservative movement was built on the premise that the main organs of knowledge — journalism, academia, science — are hopelessly and even consciously biased toward liberalism. In response to this belief, the right constructed its own bubble in which only a claim originating from within the movement can be taken as true. Julian Sanchez once called this “epistemic closure,” meaning that its beliefs were not open to correction from outside sources.

The lie that migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, is a classic example of that method in operation. The story originated from white-supremacist sites online, which relentlessly promote the idea that non-white immigrants are dirty and dangerous. It quickly worked its way from the far right into mainstream conservative channels. Republicans seemed to think the idea gave them a potent meme.

JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH), an important bridge between the GOP and elements of the radical right that have been activated by Trump, played a key role. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH) tweeted.

When reporters discovered the story was baseless — the closest thing to a factual basis for it appears to be a woman in a different city, Canton, who is not Haitian, arrested for killing a cat — JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH) pivoted in a revealing fashion. “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he conceded. But then he insisted other facts about immigration were true. (“That local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don’t know English. That rents have risen so fast that many Springfield families can’t afford to put a roof over their head.”) And so, he urged his “fellow patriots” to continue spreading the lie about pet murder:

This was a familiar sentiment on the right, a smug indifference to truth. The libs would whine, and they would win.

In the immediate term, that is what seemed to happen. The wild tale spread and was gleefully repeated by fellow Republicans in Congress. Inevitably, it found its way into Trump’s media diet. And while Trump’s debate handlers surely did not instruct him to talk about pets being abducted and consumed, they couldn’t dislodge it from his addled mind.

And there he was, standing before the country, repeating a ludicrous tale and insisting it must be true because the people on television had said it. He sounded more like an intoxicated adult or a dim child than a plausible leader of the free world.

Politics, like life, is not a morality play. Virtue is not always rewarded, nor is sin punished. But in this instance, justice prevailed. The conservative fever swamp that has sealed the Republican Party from reality and rendered it unable to effectively govern trapped its own candidate in a lie so transparently wild that it exposed his unfitness to the country.

Eat Mor Kittens1

Boy, did Trump find the perfect sycophant in JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH)2. This lie that Haitian immigrants eating people’s dogs and cats has taken a life of its own. Trump and JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH) aren’t refuting the lies. They’re doubling down.

Mike Pence turned out to be too much of a “goody two-shoes” for Trump, not even shirking his ceremonial duty as vice president to certify the 2020 election results.

JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH)? He has no ethics to uphold the constitution. There are other Trumpers who would not honor their constitutional duty if they were VP. Senator Tim Scott (T-SC) refused to answer the straight question if he would certify the election results if a Democrat won3.

  1. With apologies to Chick-fil-A® and their advertising using cows spray painting graffiti, “Eat Mor Chikin” ↩

  2. JD “John Boy” Vance (T-OH) wrote a book called Hillbilly Eligy, so I’d give J.D. the nickname of “John Boy” from the TV series, The Waltons. ↩

  3. Sen. Scott refuses to say he will accept 2024 election results, says Tru…. Meet The Press. May 5, 2024 ↩