‘Trump Blew It:’ Cat Scratch Fever on The Debate Stage“He was supposed to make her own the Biden record. That didn’t really happen.”
DONALD TRUMP HAD A PLAN FOR Tuesday night’s presidential debate. But then the cat, neither abducted nor consumed, got his tongue and talking points. It was all strategized in advance. There was just one problem: It required Trump to execute it. But when the topic of immigration came up, the former president got sidetracked by taking umbrage with Harris’s insistence that he had uninspiring rallies. He then mentioned the possibility of World War III. Only after that did he launch into the rumors of pet-eating, and then without preparing viewers about the backstory. “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs,” Trump 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.” “The [former] president was supposed to pivot but Trump blew it,” sighed one campaign insider who had been told of the never-executed debate tactic. “He was supposed to make her own the Biden record. That didn’t really happen.” It was left to his vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, to play cleanup and showcase the campaign’s strategy during an appearance on CNN 45 minutes after the debate had ended. “This town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in . . . This is what Kamala Harris's border policies have done,” Vance said. “The media didn't care about the carnage wrought by these policies until we turned it into a meme about cats . . . If we have to meme about it to get the media to care, we're going to keep on doing it because the media should care about what's going on.” That it played out this way only further underscores one of the broader struggles with Trump’s candidacy. The ex-president is often unable or unwilling to stick to the script from his campaign, which is often buffeted by moods he refuses to check. And he continues to believe his instincts trump preparation. Less than two weeks ago, Trump flubbed a pre-planned statement about his position on an abortion ballot measure in his home state of Florida. He was then forced to clarify. It turned into a story that was itself a distraction, and a reminder of a topic on which Trump faces a trust deficit with voters. The pet-eating story was, well, a different animal. The issue —which bubbled up from far-right accounts on X and then was amplified Monday by Vance before it took root in Trump’s mind—speaks to the heavy influence social media has on the former president’s messaging. Though town officials and police deny there were any verifiable stories of Haitian immigrants eating dogs or cats, Trump didn’t want to let it go. Before the debate, he went on Truth Social to post a meme of a gun-wielding MAGA cat and another of him with cats and ducks. Haitian-Americans derided the rumors as racist and xenophobic. MAGA influencers cheered the trolling. But others, including Trump-curious conservatives, saw something more pernicious at play. “Trump has put Twitter edgelords around himself and, like Kamala Harris in 2019, Trump is more interested in winning the fight on Twitter than the fight for the country,” conservative activist and commentator Erick Erickson noted on X. HEADING INTO THE DEBATE, questions about the 78-year-old’s age and competency had started to dog him in polls and the press. And privately, Trump-world insiders told The Bulwark that they had worries about his chops and coherence on stage. Trump’s campaign, though, predicted in a pre-debate conference call with reporters that he would make Harris own President Joe Biden’s record and pop the “bubble wrap” of her candidacy. They viewed the debate as possibly his last chance to do it. But a post-debate CNN snap poll showed Harris had won handedly. The campaign took solace in Trump’s feline ability to survive perilous scrapes, pointing out the CNN poll showed Trump is still far more trusted than Harris on the economy, and undecided voters told the New York Times and Reuters Harris wasn’t persuasive enough for them. But the debate left some Trump surrogates openly shaken. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told Tim Miller that the debate was a “disaster” for the former president, and he called for the firing of Trump’s debate-prep team (senior adviser Jason Miller, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, and former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard). Far-right social media accounts spread the conspiracy theory that Harris’s earrings were actually earphones. Conservatives faulted the debate moderators for bias. But Trump-world sources familiar with the preparations said the fault, in this case, rested largely with the candidate himself. “Go ahead and blame Jason and Matt. That’s their role, I guess,” said one Trump confidant. “But if anyone thinks we’re scared to talk about Haitians eating pets, they’re wrong.” While Trump may have eschewed the classic grunt work, Harris did not. Ever-aware of the split screen that kept her reactions to Trump constantly in view, she won the image war throughout the night. That included the exchange over pet eating, when she took in the moment by laughing and shaking her head in ridicule. She got an assist from ABC moderator David Muir when he jumped in to dispute the story of cats and dogs being turned into dinner. Trump continued pressing the point. And when it was Harris’s turn to talk again, she laughed at Trump. “Talk about extreme,” she chuckled. She then laid another trap by changing the subject again to the number of former Trump administration officials who won’t support him. She never answered the underlying question about the Biden-Harris administration’s impetus for changing immigration policy—and why that change had some so late in their time in office. In a CNN interview Wednesday morning, Miller also tried to polish Trump’s immigration remarks from the night before. He insisted the story of pet-eating Haitians wasn’t far-fetched by boosting a story from the conservative website the Federalist about a Springfield resident who recently called 911 to report four Haitians each carrying a goose (but the story didn’t mention cats, dogs, or pets). Miller complained about the bias of the moderators for failing to fact-check Harris on issues like fracking and said they should have talked about the Biden-Harris administration’s “airlifts” of Haitian migrants into the United States. “Why didn’t Mr. Trump do that?” CNN’s Kasie Hunt asked. Miller ducked the question. Later that morning on Truth Social, Trump posted an image of the police report as well as video of a woman in the city of Canton, Ohio (which is 173 miles away from Springfield) who was arrested for eating a cat. The woman is a U.S. citizen and not of Haitian descent, according to press reports. The failure to convert the rope-a-dope and the subsequent, frantic effort to clean up the debate performance left Trump sending mixed messages about whether he wanted to debate again, while supporters started scrambling. Conservative groups pledged to head to Springfield to find instances of cat-eating there. Others offered up financial rewards for evidence. “Alright, let's settle it: I will provide a $5,000 bounty to anyone who can provide my team with hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio. Deadline is Sunday. Go,” conservative activist Christopher Rufo offered on X. One person spotted the weakness in Rufo’s offer by writing: “Peeps, I'll be gone for a few days. I'm off to Springfield, Ohio with my cat and a large pot. Five grand is five grand.” Rufo quickly clarified: “*Must be an incident that occurred prior to the presidential debate! No eating cats, people!” Meow. You’re a free subscriber to Bulwark+. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and ad-free and member-only podcasts, become a paying subscriber. Did you know? You can update your newsletter preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here.
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‘Trump Blew It:’ Cat Scratch Fever on The Debate Stage
September 11, 2024
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