Former President Donald Trump doubled down on his false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio – and also “other things.”
For over a month, Trump and his campaign have spread misinformation about Haitian migrants living in Ohio by claiming they are eating their neighbors’ pets. The GOP nominee infamously made this claim during a September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris but was quickly fact-checked by the ABC News debate moderators.
During a town hall hosted by Univision on Wednesday, an undecided Hispanic voter named Jose Saralegui asked Trump if he still believes Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets in Ohio.
Trump replied by falsely claiming he was only “saying what was reported” before adding they are “eating other things too that they’re not supposed to be.”
SARALEGUI: My question to you, very respectfully, is, do you really believe that these people are eating the people’s pets?
TRUMP: Well, thank you very much. And this was just reported. I was just saying what was reported that’s been reported and eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be. But this is all I do is report. I have not — I was there. I’m going to be there. And we’re going to take a look and I’ll give you a full report when I do. But that’s been in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.
I will say this as far as Springfield is concerned, because I do know that situation. You have a city of 52,000 people and they’ve added almost 30,000 migrants into the city. If you were a person that lived there, if you lived in Springfield, Ohio, and all of a sudden you couldn’t get into a hospital, you couldn’t get your children into a school, you wouldn’t be able to buy groceries. You could no longer pay the rent because the government’s paying rent, any of that. If any of that happened, it would be a disaster for you and you wouldn’t be happy. We want to make our people safe and secure, and we want to make them happy.
But Springfield, Ohio, is a perfect example. You have a town, a beautiful little town with no problems. All of a sudden they have 30 or 32,000 people dropped into the town, most of whom don’t speak the language, most of whom don’t speak the language at all. And what they’re doing is they’re looking all over for interpreters. Well, I mean, I think you can’t just destroy our country. Maybe some people disagree with me, but you can’t you can’t put in a very short period of time 32,000 people into a 50,000 people town and expect things to go well. It’s a disaster. It’s a total disaster. And the people that live there are you know, they want to leave. They want to move. Because if you if you read about it or talk to them, people want to move. They want to leave because they’ve never had anything like this. And we can’t let that happen to our towns and our cities. And our country just can’t let it happen. It’s not sustainable.
Watch the clip above via Univision.
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