‘Protect Our Ducks and Kittens!’ Elon Musk and House Republicans Go All In On Fake Claims of Migrants Eating Pets In Ohio

Screenshot via House Judiciary GOP on X

Allies of former President Donald Trump took to X on Monday to spread memes about debunked claims that migrants from Haiti are eating household pets in Ohio.

The Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, which is tasked with overseeing the judicial branch of the federal government, posted to the Elon Musk -owned social media platform an AI-generated image of Trump hugging a duck and kitten and captioned it, “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” In December of 2022, the same account famously deleted its tweet, “Kanye. Elon. Trump,” after rapper Kanye West publicly praised Hitler.

Musk, the South Africa-born billionaire who has publicly endorsed Trump and is known for his outlandish and anti-immigrant posturing on X, replied with a “smiling face with 3 hearts” emoji. Musk went on to share a meme of his own that showed cartoon characters Bart and Lisa Simpson mourning their cat, captioned, “Ohio rn.”

Musk appeared to choose the Simpsons characters for his meme as the story regarding the migrants eating pets originated out of Springfield, Ohio and the long-running animated show took place in a fictional town named Springfield.

Mediaite’s David Gilmour reported on the origin of the claim, “The claim that Haitian immigrants were abducting and consuming pets, particularly cats and ducks, appears to have begun when some right-wing accounts amplified a Fox News report about a local woman, Allexis Telia Ferrell, who was arrested in August for allegedly killing and eating a cat.”

The story went viral online as MAGA influencers like Ian Miles Cheong and Charlie Kirk spread the claim. Kirk wrote on X, “Residents of Springfield, OH are reporting that Haitians are eating their family pets, another gift of the Biden-Harris mass immigration replacement plan.” Musk replied to Kirk’s post, saying, “Apparently, people’s pet cats are being eaten.”

Vice presidential candidate JD Vance parroted the claims online, writing, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. 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?” The debunked claim eventually made its way into an official fundraising email from the Trump-Vance campaign.

In an email titled, “Kamala Migrants Ravage Ohio City — And It’s Coming To Your City Next,” the Trump campaign claimed:

Migrants have reportedly been caught “decapitating ducks” and hunting geese and other livestock in public parks — and even kidnapping residents’ pets — then eating them.

The claim from the Trump campaign linked to the British tabloid the Daily Mail, which ran a story about Ohio residents claiming Haitian migrants are “decapitating and eating ducks in the park.” The story from the Mail noted the residents’ claims are “unconfirmed” and included a comment from the City of Springfield, which said, “In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

The Springfield Police Division told local media on Monday “they have received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.” The local report elaborated on the source of the claims, which included a Facebook post that Kirk also shared:

A social media post originally from a Springfield Facebook group went viral nationally in recent days. The original poster did not cite first-hand knowledge of an incident. Instead, they claimed that their neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat and found it hanging from a branch at a Haitian neighbor’s home being carved up to be eaten.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump also fact-checked the claims and roundly debunked them. Bump wrote about how the claims came together as a kind of mash-up of various news stories and second-hand accounts. He wrote the claim “metastasized, with people plucking pieces of information off the internet and attaching it to the original claim as though it was supporting evidence. A guy at a community meeting mentioned the ducks! An Ohio woman was recently arrested for eating a cat! Just proves the point.” Bump added :

Except that the guy carrying the goose was photographed in Columbus a month ago and is not obviously an immigrant from Haiti, much less one in Springfield.

And except that the woman arrested for eating the cat was also not obviously an immigrant — and was arrested in a different Ohio town about 100 miles northeast of Springfield.

Ohio has seen an influx of legal Haitian migrants who have come into the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program as Haiti has been rocked by violence. Civil rights attorney Erik Crew told the Hill that claims of migrants eating household pets “is the same old anti-Black playbook that we’ve seen for hundreds of years in Ohio being rolled out to divide and create hate, especially around election times.”

Musk recently stirred controversy by promoting inaccurate claims that critics say helped to fuel race riots in the UK and in the past has spread debunked conspiracy theories, like suggesting the Paul Pelosi hammer attack was the result of him picking up a male prostitute. Musk later deleted the tweet.