Explaining Trump's false claims about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio

Published: Sep 11, 2024 Duration: 00:04:46 Category: News & Politics

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the Springfield Ohio city manager is speaking out about misinformation it comes after former president Trump echoed a false rumor about immigrants eating pets there at Tuesday night's debate listen 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 I just want to clarify here you bring up Springfield Ohio and ABC News did reach out to the city manager there uh he told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed injured or abused by individuals within the Immigrant community and that city manager now tells ABC News quote it is disappointing that some of the narrative surrounding our city have been skewed by misinformation on social media and further Amplified by political rhetoric in the current highly charged presidential election cycle ABC senior reporter Emanuel caliba covers misinformation for us and she joins now for more on this Manuel officials in Springfield say law enforcement is actually now investigating a bomb threat at the city's Commission office this morning I want to be clear we don't know whether this threat is specifically tied to that false rumor or the former president's comments at the debate but you say there is precedent of misinformation like this leading to threats of violence or actual violence absolutely some of us may think that this is just a harmless rumor but in fact it's not we have a long history of examples that show that this type of misinformation can have real world consequences there are reports local reports right now of Haitian families in that community in Springfield being too scared to send their children to school um they're being intimidated some have had their car vandalized and some are considering now leaving the community even if they've been there for six plus years um so it's having real world consequences we saw this happening recently in the UK where an a tragic tragic incident was taken and the same scenario happened online it was inflamed and used for political uh purposes and then um it led to riots to Violent riots so we know this has consequences on the ground and it can be harmful to people and now tropes about eating pets have long been used to stoke fears of immigrants so how did these false rumors start and how did they reach this level where you're hearing about them on the national stage uh it's a bit long and complex but I'll try and break it down simply essentially we believe that it started on a local Facebook group a small rumor posted by someone allegedly from the community saying they had heard from a neighbor's friend's daughter that her cat had disappeared and that it had she had founded she had found it hanging from a tree so a a rumor heard you know by from a third party the sister of the mother the neighbor of the so hard to stand up then that post circulated on X it was pushed out by a uh conservative account on on the platform you known as as Twitter formerly known as Twitter it kind of blew up there along with an other image of a man holding uh a goose I tracked down that image it's a real image but it was taken in Columbus in July and the man said he had no indication that the man he took the photo of was a Haitian immigrant um and so it's all of this sort of Visual Evidence being used to prop up a rumor but the Visual Evidence has been debunked there was also a video that social media users were pointing to body cam footage you might have seen this cross your feeds you or you know our viewers at home and it showed a woman who was being arrested for allegedly having um killed and eaten a cat this was taken into Canton not in Springfield which is 3 hours away and the woman was a US citizen and so it's again these three pieces um of of visual of of content that are being used as Visual Evidence that are false that have been debunked and since this rumors started in um and during the weekend there has been no credible reports and no uh documentation of this ever happening interesting sometimes the tricky things with these things is when you have these little nuggets that appear to be true a photo a video and then you realize the details are not how they appear and how they are being painted on social media makes it a little more Amplified all right senior reporter Emanuel CBA great work as always thank you

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