During the September 10, 2024 presidential debate, Trump said, “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.” Moderator David Muir noted that the city manager had told ABC News “there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” City and county officials said repeatedly that it was not happening.
Five days later, on CNN's “State of the Union,” JD Vance defended repeating the claim: “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, Dana.” Asked for evidence, he said, “the evidence is the firsthand account of my constituents.” He then said he meant “we're creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing on it.” The same morning, Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, called the claim “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”
The consequences were real. PolitiFact, naming the claim its 2024 Lie of the Year, recorded “Dozens of bomb threats at schools, grocery stores and government buildings” in Springfield.
Correction (September 30, 2026): an earlier version of this entry said Vance “admitted he 'created' the story.” That overstated his words. He said he was willing to “create stories” to get the media's attention, and then said he meant creating media focus. The entry now quotes the transcript. Two earlier key facts, that this was Trump's fourth Lie of the Year and that he never retracted the claim, were removed because the cited sources do not support them.
Update (October 14, 2026): at an October 12 rally in Youngstown, Ohio, Trump said of Springfield's Haitian immigrants, “Remember during the debate I said some of the things they were doing, I was right. Turned out I was right. I won't get into the exact. Remember that? I was right,” and that “they're being taken out and they're almost going to be gone,” according to the Roll Call Factbase transcript. He did not repeat the specific claim about pets.