Did Trump Reset the Agenda When He Accused Haitians of Eating Pets?

Donald Trump

During his September 10, 2024 debate with Kamala Harris, brimming with indignation at the latest nonsensical conspiracy theory, Donald Trump complained about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio:

“They're eating the cats. They're eating - they're eating the pets of the people that live there.”

This debate was otherwise a failure for Trump, according to the polls, even in the minds of many Republicans. That is because Harris appeared to be stronger, better prepared, and more articulate. She seized the political agenda. Nevertheless, Trump re-seized the political agenda by lying about cats (and dogs). It was a delayed effect. So, in that twisted way, Trump turned the worst part of an embarrassing debate loss into a remarkable political advantage.

Of all the ridiculous things that Trump said during the debate, his comment about cats and dogs was the silliest – the most absurd – the most easily discredited. But for days after, the press could hardly talk about anything else. Thus, by lying through his teeth, Trump retook control of the agenda. People quickly forgot about what a terrible impression he had made while debating, and they forgot how much better Harris did than he did. None of that mattered any more. That is what “seizing the agenda” means. No, it all came down to the pets. Was anyone actually eating the pets? No, of course not. How silly. That wasn’t the point.

As one of her debating techniques, Harris cleverly provoked Trump into spewing out his conspiracy theories. Never one to overlook an opportunity, Trump immediately launched into a diatribe that may well be the lowest point in recent American politics. He argued that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio had been stealing and eating people’s pets. (The fact that his diatribe succeeded makes one tremble in horror):

“And look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don't want to talk -- not going to be Aurora [Colorado] or Springfield [Ohio]. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.”

This was, of course, like Trump’s other conspiracy theories, not true. The rumor, which apparently originated in right-wing social media posts, arose entirely from a real case in which a woman who is not an immigrant, who lives in an entirely different part of the state, and is said to have frequent run-ins with the authorities, was found cooking a cat. Now, I like cats, and I am against people eating them. However, the Haitian immigrants in Springfield were not eating cats.

Earlier Post: Did Kamala Harris Set the Agenda When She Debated Donald Trump?

Springfield’s mayor, Rob Rue, and local police quickly denied that they had any believable reports that Haitian immigrants were stealing people’s pets, much less eating them. Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, urged for calm. He explained that the Haitian migrants had been in Springfield for years, that they were good residents and hard workers, and that they had helped to revitalize a struggling town. He emphasized that they were legal immigrants:

“What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy.”

Unfortunately, DeWine’s fact-based talk collapsed in the face of anti-immigrant anger. DeWine reported that Springfield has received 33 or more bomb threats, many (but not all!) from overseas. It has become necessary to scour the schools for bombs every morning before classes begin. A cultural event was canceled to prevent anti-immigrant violence.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of immigrants, held a town hall in Springfield, where he told a packed audience full of Trump hats that he wasn’t going to talk about cats (apparently realizing that the falsehood was too silly for words), but that he was troubled that so many immigrants had come to the city. Sidestepping the issue further, he said that the big problem was “illegal immigration,” neatly sidestepping the fact that the Haitian immigrants had arrived legally:

“What is the right legal immigration policy in this country? I’m guessing it’s illegal immigration. If you are first act of entering this country breaks the law, you should not be able to enter this country.”

Quickly seeing a way to gain readers and viewers, the press gave abundant attention to Ramaswamy’s slippery comments. Sensing a golden opportunity, Trump himself plans to visit Springfield, much to the mayor’s anxiety, presumably to spread more anti-immigrant ideas.

Even worse, vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance got on television and admitted that he had been lying about the Haitian refugees. Indeed, Vance repeated false claims about the refugees even after his staff determined that the claims were false.

He said:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” [italics added]

So, let’s summarize:

During the debate, Trump made an utterly false and unreasonable complaint about Haitian immigrants who are, first, legally present, second, not eating cats, and, third, making an economic contribution to what had been a dying community.

 
Trump and his supporters quickly generalized the issue. Did it really matter whether the immigrants were legal or not? No, it turns out that they were immigrants, and this was enough to anger many conservatives. For years, I have heard Republicans declare that they support legal immigration, but not illegal immigration. That similarly noble position has, apparently, puffed into the ether.

 
Trump, Vance, and other Republicans are spreading a story that they know to be false. Doing so, they displaced the public agenda for several days, obliterating complaints about Trump’s poor debate performance.

What does it mean that Trump and his supporters have reset the agenda? It now becomes harder to talk about Springfield’s real issues, or the real issues of immigration. Trump and his supporters have filled the discourse with outrageous, easily disproven lies. Sheer malice. Having reset the agenda to immigration, not Trump’s debate performance, they now skitter and scamp to a variety of inconsistent positions. Instead of admitting they were wrong, they switch from one complaint to the other. No, it’s not really the cats that are the real issue, the complaint is that the hospitals are packed. No, it is not really about cats and dogs either; instead, it is that some of the Haitians are bad drivers. No, Trump is not really concerned about cats or dogs. The issue, they say, is that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have opened the border and invited families to come to the U.S. and work.

Trump started the issue by flat-out lying about the immigrants. Caught out, Trump and his supporters simply squirm from one point, to the next, to the next, never settling on one argument, and thus never leaving themselves open to basic dialectic. Arguing with them is like wrestling with a huge ball of half-chilled Jell-O.

On a more complex level, however: by resetting the agenda, Trump has refocused the campaign. We were no longer talking about his confused, awkward debate performance. We, instead, started talking about the issue that made Trump famous: opposition to immigrants. Or, put it this way: Trump lost the debate on September 10, but, within a few days, he and his supporters gleefully rewrote the scoresheet and claimed victory.

Much of the press was hostile to Trump’s arguments. That is not the point at all. No, the point is that for about a week, the press and the pundits talked about Haitian immigrants and cats, to the exclusion of almost anything else in the political realm. Inflation, the economy, the coronavirus – and everything else – almost vanished from public discourse. The (mythical) cats ruled. Trump’s terrible debating was forgotten, and we forgot about his terrible debate because everyone was busy hassling over the most absurd thing he had said during the debate.

Such is American politics.

The cat-eating immigrants were not the only false conspiracy that Trump brought up during the debate. Wishing to be complete, Trump also ranted that FBI crime statistics were fudged, accused former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of being complicit in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol building, accused Harris of “weaponizing” the government against him, and falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Those are old-hat conspiracy theories. No one much cares about them anymore. No, it was the cats that captured people’s attention. Now, the cat conspiracy theory was the silliest of the bunch, since no speck of evidence supported it, but it was new. It got people’s attention. People like cats. People like cats more than they like people. Trump and his supporters latched onto the accusation and refused to let it go.

So, people who think that Trump lost the debate because he lost on the issues are missing the point. For example, analyzing the debate right after, Republican pollster Frank Luntz wrongly speculated that Trump’s ranting about the cats and dogs while failing to discuss real issues would cost him dearly:

“The conversations about people eating dogs and cats, calling the leader of Hungary one of the greatest world leaders, repeatedly missing the opportunity to focus on inflation and affordability and the complete inability to present his point of view without completely tearing into her, into Joe Biden, into whomever was in his sights.”

I wish that I believed that Luntz was right. However, Trump recognizes, like no politician before him, that huge segments of the population could not care less about what is, and is not, true. It is not clear that Trump’s tirade about people stealing and eating pets helped him. What is clear is that he regained control of the agenda. We are talking about the issues that he wants us to talk about.

Heaven help us.

by William D. Harpine

______________________

Earlier Posts:

Biden Versus Trump, the June 27, 2024 Presidential Debate

Did Donald Trump Change the Subject and Set the Agenda at the RNCC Fundraiser?

Copyright ©  2024 by William D. Harpine

Official White House photo, public domain

The Soul of Donald Trump, Conspiracy Theorist: Let the Conclusion Prove the Evidence? Huh?

Donald Trump

The way logic is supposed to work is, we gather evidence, and we then use that evidence to prove a conclusion. Simple enough? In contrast, if we use our conclusion to prove our evidence, and then use the evidence to prove the conclusion, we have just tied ourselves into a circle. We have proven nothing.

So, can the conclusion prove the evidence? How does that make sense? It does not, of course. Still, let us try to make sense out of Donald Trump’s latest conspiracy theory:

“You saw what happened this weekend.” So said former President Donald Trump in a June 20, 2024 political rally in Racine, Wisconsin, as he accused Joe Biden of suffering from dementia. He cited manifestly twisted evidence to prove something that his audience already believed, and which they believed without any real evidence. Arguing in a circle.

That’s not a surprise. Abandoning the burden of proof, conspiracy theorists often start with the conclusion, not the evidence. Now, conservatives consistently state, with no real evidence, that President Joe Biden is senile. Who needs evidence? If you believe the conclusion, isn’t that enough? After all, the basic mentality of all conspiracy theories is that the world is out to get you. If we start with the (unproven) claim that Biden is senile, well, then the slightest evidence, no matter how silly, reinforces the existing (unproven) premise. For conspiracy theorists, the (unproven) conclusion becomes its own evidence. Reality twists into a circle.

Jumping on the bandwagon, Trump’s rally speech ripped into Biden with a vengeance:

“Joe Biden is humiliating our country on the world stage. He’s actually humiliating us. You saw what happened this weekend. It’s turning the United States into a total joke all over the world.”

Why would Trump say such a thing? Well, that’s simple enough. Over the last few days, the ultra-conservative New York Post published unscrupulously edited video captures that appear to show President Joe Biden wandering around in a demented stupor. In one of those, the video editor simply cropped the image. The un-cropped picture showed the group of skydivers dropping down on the world leaders in a ceremonial display. While most of the G7 leaders focused on the skydiver in the middle, Biden briefly turned to speak to a skydiver who landed off to the side. The video editor simply cropped the image so no one could see the skydiver off to the side. Any 10-year-old with a computer could explain how to do that.


The Headline Said It All!

Context always matters.

To understand how Trump got to his point (“you saw what happened this weekend”), we need to look briefly at the New York Post’s story. The Post’s story was sneaky: the newspaper posted a deceptive headline, followed by a less deceptive narrative, then slightly less deceptive picture caption, followed by a more accurate explanation tucked into the story, where casual readers could miss it. The Post’s presentation started with a baldly false statement, which, led, step by step, to a somewhat more accurate story. “See!” The editors could have said, “We told the truth – eventually.” 

Let’s start with the headline. Cropping or no cropping, the Post’s headline targeted conservative conspiracy theorists: “Biden wanders away at G7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM.” That, obviously, was bluntly false. Then, however, the Post’s explanation, in the story itself, hedged the claim: 

“As the leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies applauded the evening parachuting presentation, the 81-year-old US president’s attention visibly wandered away from where the others were looking.” [italics added] 

That is, as they explained their image, the Post’s authors did not say that Biden was wandering away from the scene. They merely noted, correctly, that Biden briefly looked at something different from what the other leaders looked at. That was still oddly deceptive, but less so than the headline.

The Post added an equally cagey photo caption: “Joe Biden appeared to wander off from the group of world leaders during the G7 summit Thursday” [Italics added]. Since it was inaccurate to say that he wandered off, the Post’s writers qualified their point: Biden “appeared” to wander off. Of course, the only reason that Biden appeared to wander off is that the Post had cropped the image.

Sneaky, sneaky. Unfortunately, the headline said it all! “Biden wanders away.” Once the headline made its point, it was the Post’s sneaky qualifications, not Biden, that wandered into the dell of deception.

A second photo, later in the story, correctly displayed the second skydiver. A bit later in the story, the Post admitted that Biden was interacting with the other skydiver. Accurate, but too late.

Roundly criticized for their deceptive reporting, the New York Post decided that they had no choice but to stick with their story. Conservative media and Big Tech outlets around the world continued to circulate the Post’s deceptive images. The misleadingly edited videos from which they were taken spread across the Internet. As NBC News accurately reported, “Misleading videos and false claims that President Joe Biden wandered off aimlessly from the G7 conference last week continued to go viral despite debunkings and fact-checks that tried to correct the record.” 

Now, let us remember what Donald Trump said. Trump said, “You saw what happened this weekend.” But you didn’t see it!  Trump’s audience presumably saw the events only as the New York Post misreported them! Trump’s audience, I presume, saw only the cropped image. Context always matters.


Donald Trump Ran with the Story

Never let a good smear go to waste. In any case, the New York Post’s ridiculous story gave Donald Trump all the evidence he needed. During this Racine speech, Trump ignored the Post’s hedging. He simply jumped on the headline. Why not? Isn’t that why the Post wrote the headline?

“First, he wandered off the G7 in Europe, the stage. He looked like he didn’t know where the hell he was, but he didn’t know where he was. He’s blaming it now on AI. He’s saying… He doesn’t know what AI is, but that’s okay. Now they’re saying the media is manipulating. Oh, he’s saying the media is manipulating now. On that one, I have to stick up for the media, I have to tell you.” [Italics added] [ellipsis mark in the transcript marks a brief pause]

(Note, however, that the cropped image showed nothing about a stage; the G7 incident occurred outdoors, in a field.) (So, now who is wandering off in confusion? Hmm.) Also note how Trump continued to ridicule his opponents without disproving them: “Now they’re saying the media is manipulating. Oh, he’s saying the media is manipulating now. On that one, I have to stick up for the media, I have to tell you.”

Did Trump have, or offer, any evidence that “he didn’t know where he was?” No. Did he refute the debunking of the absurd images? No! Instead, he merely ridiculed the fact-checkers: “He’s blaming it now on AI [artificial intelligence].”

Quick note: you don’t need AI to crop an image; free photo editing software will do the job in a few seconds. A 10-year-old with a computer could show Trump how it was done.

If Trump wanted to be rational, he might say: “No, the image was obviously not edited; it is accurate, and here are the reasons that I say that…” Trump, however, had no reasons. The image was manipulated. Trump had no evidence otherwise. Any fool can see that it was manipulated. Yet, for Trump’s audience, ridicule was refutation enough. Trump was not merely ridiculing the fact-checkers; he ridiculed the concept of facts. His cheering audience seemed happy to go along.


Conclusion

This blog post started by saying that Trump’s evidence only seems believable because he assumed the conclusion that he wanted to prove. We all know that to be wrong. Conservatives, however, seem to believe that Biden is demented with the same passion that they believe that the Texas sky is blue and the ocean is wet. If their belief has grown strong enough, they can toss out any claim that Biden is not demented. Their belief that Biden is demented is so powerful that it overwhelms contradiction and invites the most ridiculous proof. If they receive the slightest, most absurd, utterly impossible evidence that Biden suffers from dementia, they will accept that absurd, impossible evidence – because they have already accepted the conclusion.

I guess, for some conservatives, inflexible thinking becomes its own punishment.

Does President Biden suffer from mental decline? I don’t know. How could I know? I’m not a psychologist. My first impression, however, concludes that Biden must be healthy: if conservatives had evidence of his mental decline, they would stop manipulating such absurd images.

Trump reinforced his audience by pitching onto evidence that was visibly deceptive. Only an audience motivated by gullibility rather than reason could take Trump’s claim seriously.

Yet, Trump continues to thrive in election polls. What in the world does that say about the United States of America’s voters? I shudder to think.

_______________

Earlier Post: Why Are Trump's Supporters Happy with His Conspiracy Theories at the Helsinki Summit?

Earlier Post: Trump and Conspiracy Theories
_______________

P.S. Once again, I must thank the good people at rev.com for providing a verbatim transcript of Trump’s speech. Rev.com is a commercial transcript-providing company. Their public transcripts, which they post as a service, are a national treasure. There is no better way to poke through the political hype practiced by politicians of all stripes, liberal, conservative, or whatever, than to look at the full text of a speaker’s exact words.


Research Notes:

In a common logical pattern, a previously proven conclusion serves as evidence for further argument. That requires that the conclusion must already be proven. That’s not what either Trump or the New York Post did. What they did was to assume their conclusion. They used that unproved conclusion to prove that their shaky evidence proved their (still-unproved) conclusion. That was just arguing in a circle.

Some arguments do start with assumptions. Happens every day in geometry class. It is, however, never valid to use an assumption to prove that the assumption is true. That is just twisted. The best guide to non-syllogistic logic is still Howard Kahane’s groundbreaking book, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric. Highly recommended.

Professor David Zarefsky has argued that a basic technique of conspiracy theorists is to make assumptions instead of proving their points. When they do so, conspiracy theorists disregard the basic dialectical burden to prove the points that they assert.

by William D. Harpine

Copyright © 2024 by William D. Harpine

Image: Official White House photo

Tucker Carlson Used a Textbook Fallacy to Question the Coronavirus Vaccines

Coronavirus, CDC image

In a recent commentary, Tucker Carlson said: “To say it in unison – and they’re all saying it – that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is simply untrue, that’s a lie.” Strong words! However, public health authorities’ point is that the vaccines are highly effective. Carlson’s rebuttal was that the vaccines are not completely effective. Carlson’s point is a classic example of the false dilemma fallacy. That is, Carlson implied that the vaccine is either effective or it is not – all or nothing. That is a fallacy because no vaccine works all the time.

People commit the false dilemma fallacy when they tell us that we only have two choices when, in fact, we have many. A vaccine might be perfect. A vaccine might be imperfect. Those are not, however, the only two choices. As Kathy Katella of Yale Medicine points out, the current vaccines used in the United States are 86%-98% effective in preventing severe coronavirus infections. Although that is an excellent result, it’s not perfect.  In Texas, for example, 99.5% of coronavirus deaths were among persons who were not vaccinated. Similarly, North Carolina health officials report that 94% of new coronavirus cases are among unvaccinated patients.

Still, if a tiny percentage of the serious illnesses occur among vaccinated people, does that prove that the vaccines do not work? Or does it merely prove that they are slightly imperfect?

To perpetuate his false dilemma fallacy, Carlson first cited British public health authority Sir Patrick Vallance, who said that 40% of British coronavirus hospital patients have been fully vaccinated. Carlson’s conclusion: “it makes you wonder how effective are these drugs anyway.”

Carlson contrasted this figure against what he said were promises made by American officials: “In the U.S., they’re telling us that no one who’s been fully vaccinated is fine. The only people getting dangerously sick or dying from COVID are the people who refused to get the vaccine.” In part, of course, Carlson was working with ambiguous or overstated comments by American officials, such as President Joe Biden’s comment that “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and they’re killing people.” (Biden could, of course, have phrased his point more precisely.)

Did you notice Carlson’s rhetorical trick? “They’re telling us that no one who’s been fully vaccinated is fine.” I assume he meant to say “everyone,” not “no one.” In either case, “everyone” and “no one” are absolutes. The false dilemma fallacy requires us to think in absolutes, in all-or-nothing terms. Carlson was leading his audience astray, for public health doesn’t deal in absolutes.

Carlson next slipped in one additional step: he sarcastically said that we are being told that “the only people getting sick are the ones who for political reasons have refused to get the vaccines. How many times have you heard that in the past month? As they continue to politicize medicine – almost at an irrecoverable point.” Again, notice the trick: “the only people.” Not most people, not almost everyone, but the only people. Another absolute.

Carlson's next target was CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who said that “This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated. We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk.” She continued that: “communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well.” She then pointed out that people who are unvaccinated were very much at risk.

Walensky worded her statement pretty carefully. Carlson, however, exaggerated her point just a little bit to get to his fallacious conclusion. What Carlson said is this:

“Our CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, has said the same thing. If you’re vaccinated, Rochelle Walensky has assured us, you’re safe. You’re not just protected from infection – you're protected from serious illness or hospitalization, and even the lurking menace known as the Delta variant.”

There, Carlson didn't refute Walensky’s claim that the vaccines are protective – which they obviously are. Instead, he said that public health authorities are falsely telling us that, if you’re vaccinated, “you’re safe.” All or nothing.

So, if a few people get sick after being vaccinated, does that prove that the vaccines don’t work? Of course not. It does, however, let Carlson introduce a seed of doubt.

Now, I will agree that the public health authorities, who seek for us to avoid illness, sometimes overstate their case a little bit. Wise managers know that it’s smart to under-promise and over-deliver. I certainly understand that public health authorities want to encourage us to get vaccinated and to keep ourselves safe. At the same time, no public health authority can phrase a point so carefully that someone as unscrupulous as Tucker Carlson can’t twist and squirm. 

Conspiracy theories work with fallacies by their nature. A fallacy is, by definition, a flawed argument that can be made to seem reasonable. We hear that a few people got sick after taking the vaccine, and assume that the vaccine is useless. That is a fallacy because the majority of people who take the vaccine are highly protected and safe. In our current atmosphere of political mistrust, illogical arguments find fertile ground in the minds of people who are suspicious and uninformed. Knowing this, Tucker Carlson took full advantage to spread his bizarre conspiracy theory.

I think all of us like to think in absolutes. If I never run a red light, I think I will never be hit at an intersection. If I never drink alcohol, I think I’ll never get liver disease. Unfortunately, the real world gives us few absolutes. The real world faces us with gray areas, probabilities, and risk factors. When we start to think in all-or-nothing terms, we oversimplify our problems and make bad decisions. 

• Donald Trump Committed Straw Man Fallacies

• Tucker Carlson Got Tricky with His Evidence About Climate Change

Research Note: The best source about fallacies is still Howard Kahane, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric.