December 18 – PolitiFact.com, a nonprofit journalism fact-checking site, presented President-elect Donald Trump and Ohio U.S. Senator J.D. Vance with their annual Lie of the Year award for a story that hit close to home comes .
Trump and Vance did not make the false claim that Haitian immigrants ate the pets of Springfield residents. But they seized on the false rumor on social media and ran with it during the presidential campaign, doubling down when challenged.
PolitiFact wrote that Trump took his criticism of anti-migrant border policies to a new level “with a blatant disregard for the facts” when he expanded the “pets” claim before 67 million television viewers during the September 10 presidential debate.
“They eat the dogs in Springfield,” Trump said early in the debate. “The people who came in. They eat the cats. They eat, they eat the pets of the people who live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
The Springfield News-Sun first caught wind of the social media rumor the weekend before that Haitian immigrants were eating pets.
A Springfield woman, Erika Lee, had posted a Facebook post titled “Warning to Everyone About Our Beloved Pets and the People Around Us,” claiming that her neighbor’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat and had later found it on a branch near a Haitian neighbor. at home, cut up to be eaten.
By the morning of Monday, September 9, the News-Sun had received a response from police and written our first article stating that police had no evidence of such reports. The News-Sun wrote dozens of stories over the next two weeks, quoting city, county and park officials, Haitian residents, speakers at town meetings and others, confirming that there was no evidence to support the claims. Lee, the original social media poster, acknowledged that her own claim was false.
The News-Sun also wrote numerous articles about the real concerns raised by the arrival of more than 10,000 Haitians: pressure on the area’s schools and health care system, as well as public services and road safety.
PolitiFact said part of the reason they chose the Trump-Vance Haitian-pets claim as their lie of the year was that, as story after story made clear it was untrue, Trump and Vance campaigned for the lie remained.
“When Trump was challenged by voters and interviewers, he said he heard it on TV; Vance said voters called his office with the claim,” PolitiFact wrote. Vance later said in an interview that to get media attention, sometimes I have to “create stories.”
PolitiFact said the couple’s continued lies had major consequences, including threats against city officials, closing schools over bomb threats, and stigmatizing a city and its residents “in the name of campaign rage.”
PolitiFact, which is run by the Poynter Institute, has been publishing an annual report lie for 16 years.
