Biden hits back at Trump’s false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets

President Joe Biden condemned a racist smear circulating online falsely accusing Haitian immigrants of eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, telling Black guests at the White House on Friday that the rhetoric had no place in America.

Alluding to his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, whose campaign first promoted the rumors on Monday before he amplified them during the presidential debate on Tuesday, Biden said the attacks have to stop.

Biden was addressing a gathering on the South Lawn of the White House in celebration of Black community achievements. He noted that his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is a “proud Haitian American.”

“I want to take a moment to say something —so many Americans like Karine, as she 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. This has to stop, what he’s doing. It has to stop.”

Biden also said that he had “made a commitment my administration would look like America, and it does.”

READ MORE: Someone was accused of eating a cat in Ohio. It’s not a Haitian immigrant as Trump claimed

Trump, his vice president running mate JD Vance and their supporters have spent the week spreading debunked claims about Haitian immigrants abducting and eating their neighbors’ pets and wildlife in Springfield. The midwestern town, which had a dwindling population of only about 60,000 residents just a few years ago, has seen an influx of immigrants from Haiti after the Biden administration granted them legal immigration protections due to the violence in their homeland, and also launched a two year-humanitarian parole program for nationals of Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela last year.

There have been no cases of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio, the city manager has said.

Earlier this week, the Miami-Dade branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People demanded an apology from the Trump campaign. The attacks are “reprehensible,” NAACP President Daniella Pierre said in a statement.

“Haiti’s independence has contributed significantly to America’s identity and history, and so the community is shocked and outraged by that baseless claim,” she said. “We condemn this disgusting behavior, and we demand the Trump/Vance campaign publicly apologize not only to the Haitian immigrants against whom this claim was made, but to the broader Haitian-American community who is being negatively impacted by this kind of dangerous propaganda.”