The misinformation associated with Haitians eating local pets in Springfield, Ohio, was already spreading on social media when Donald Trump highlighted it as a key argument against immigration during his presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they're eating the dogs,” he said. “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.”
Comprising a significant diaspora in the United States, Haitians are people originally from Haiti, a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean.
The social media has since been inundated with AI-generated images of animals, pushing the narrative that Trump would protect animals while Vice President Harris would not. Many of these images have racist connotations.
But how did the rumour begin?
The rumour began with an early Facebook post from a Springfield resident named Erika Lee, who mentioned a neighbour's missing cat. Lee said that the neighbour suspected the cat had been attacked by her Haitian neighbours.
Newsguard, a media watchdog that tracks online misinformation, discovered that Lee was one of the first to share a post about the rumor on social media, with screenshots of it circulating widely. Additional posts fueled the false claims, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose in Columbus, Ohio, which was being misrepresented as proof of the rumours about Springfield.
CBS News spoke the Ohio man who took the photo. He said he captured it in July and shared it on Reddit, specifically in the Ohio and Columbus subreddits.
However, Lee told media that she had never imagined her post would become fodder for conspiracy theories and hate. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” she said.
“I’m not a racist,” she said, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community.
The city's spokesperson also told the media that there have been "no credible reports or specific claims" of pets being harmed by migrants.
How AI images played a role in fueling the misinformation?
By using different AI apps, people quickly generated playful and, at times, racist images and videos to promote the narrative that Trump would safeguard animals, while Harris would do the opposite.
After those images and videos were repeatedly shared, some amassed tens of millions of views and eventually appeared on Trump’s own social media accounts.
Images surfaced showing cats holding military-style rifles for self-defense, cats with political signs, cats and ducks sitting together, AI-generated humans holding cat-themed signs, and even Trump cuddling cats and ducks.
The images, laced with racist undertones, depict a person of colour chasing a cat in one, while another shows a food truck operated by Haitians offering "dogs, cats, and ducks" for breakfast.
AI-generated images supporting Harris that featured pets seemed relatively fewer. However, social media users did share a few, including one showing Harris holding a dog with a sign that read, “Dogs for Harris”.
Many including vice presidential candidate JD Vance, X owner Elon Musk, and Republican Senator Ted Cruz also amplified these false claims using AI-generated images.
The Republican House judiciary account put up an AI-generated image of Trump.
Musk, who has been supporting Trump in the upcoming US Presidential Elections shared an AI-generated image of a cat and a duck, with the caption "Save them".