Eating CATS!? MAGA's Latest Conspiracy Theory is as BONKERS as it is OFFENSIVE! | Bulwark Takes

hey y'all it's Tim Miller from the bullwark here and I have brought in my two Haitian experts my two cat eating experts uh my two com comp compatriots Sam Stein and Mark Caputo guys um Sam I want you to explain the details of this story it's just one of these other insane magga old wives tales and and it was brought to my attention this morning uh by JD Vance in particular but many people are sharing this and he tweeted about how Haitian illegal immigrants are causing chaos All Over Springfield Ohio including one in where there was an Abduction of a cat that was then eaten according apparently to the Vice Presidential nominee of the Republican Party Sam could you just break down what we know right now about the cat eating story well having spent years earning my doctorate in cat eating I I am the foremost expert on this one uh this is uh the story actually extends back several weeks uh there's been a fair bit of reporting about this town in Ohio Springfield uh which you know has seen an influx of Haitian migrants uh many of them coming from places where Mark's from uh because there's been a a revitalization of Springfield a lot of jobs uh suddenly available there they've come up uh from sorry I've got to interrupt though I'm sorry I thought the industrial Midwest has been hollowed out during the Biden economic every everywhere else but Springfield uh so yeah but the fair number too it's like 15 to 20,000 by some estimates have come to Springfield and it's kind of overwhelmed the town a little bit and the New York Times NPR all kind of went there in in early mid August and wrote stories about this part of the reason that it has caused an uproar was that there was an incident a very tragic incident where a bus driver uh crashed it was a Haitian migrant he did not actually have a illegal license he had identification but he crashed the the bus and uh a kid died and then suddenly this town was kind of ripped up and and torn apart now that's a normal story like it fair enough people have like problems or issues or tensions around an influx of migrants it it's drained the town resources schools are trying to figure out should they hire more cops more teachers y y it's gone into the realm of like conspiratorial weirdness though in the past couple days where all of a sudden people are saying ah these people uh are killing the ducks in the city pond and then they're abducting cats and eating cats and like it's gotten really weird and conspiratorial and if you go online it's like everywhere now and it's Amplified by all these sort of magot types including JD Vance and with respect to just the cat eating thing because this is what's like jumping out of people is that no that that as far as every bit of evidence it's not true like there was a cat abduction and a skinning okay it was involving a woman in Canton Ohio not Springfield okay there was a single Camp skinning in 173 miles away and was that by a Haitian immigrant no not a Haitian immigrant just a weird it's not clear that she ate the cat the neighbor said she ate the cat but we don't know if she at the C She's accused to have eaten the cat but nobody nobody like watched her putting it on a grill or anything not that I'm aware of no got it so that those the the basic facts all right so Mark H uh you live in Miami uh there's a Little Haiti I live I used to live right by Little Haiti back when I lived in Miami um and and as you said you've talked to a couple of patients how are people feeling about these accusations that they are monstrous hordes of cat eaters by the Republican presal I think yeah pissed off would be the best way to describe it um Joy franus for a number of years he's a spokesman for ACLU for instance he's not speaking His official capacity he's Haitian American born in Miami 34 years old I asked him like Joey you ever hear this he goes yeah look ever since I was a kid this used to be a racist xenophobic slur against Haitians because it was a good way of just putting us down and he compared it to the accusation against Haitian Americans Haitian immigrants haian migrants for bringing AIDS into the United States in the 1980s he says get off a piece with that I guess for a number of years I just hadn't heard this I mean in part because in Miami we got a lot of cats we got a lot of ducks of these ugly ducks if you ever SE them they're called muscovi Ducks they're really hideous looking but like I think we have the nation's largest Haitian deper community in Miami if not we have the second largest one and there's a lot of cats and a lot of ducks they don't seem to be getting eaten they don't appear to be getting eaten no but Trump had made some inroads in this community so it's interesting like there's there is a potential like political backlash I guess possibility I maybe not we could be overstating it but right I mean like Trump's doing marginally better than like Republicans had in in this community yeah right he's marginally done better done margely better than prior Republicans in a number of immigrant communities Haitian Americans were no exception and that was despite or after the fact that he had allegedly he denies it called Haiti a [ __ ] hole country or kind referenced it that way nevertheless there are people uh he he has a a strong back those people who back Donald Trump and the Haitian American Community I imagine are not going to be deterred by this because for whatever reason they like him they're are MAA Haitians there's MAA Vietnamese immigrants lots of Bas okay well uh and and unlike in many of these situations like Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric ends up like kind of uh splashing back on him more with like you know more socially culturally liberal types that are like that get offended um on it but we have Sam the Ridiculousness of the Trump people on display here you just shared in slack you just shared in slack here here's a picture of trump hugging a cat and a duck put out by the official house Judiciary GOP not like not like the RNC or the nrsc the house Judiciary GOP like the the you know the Legal Eagles supposedly of our Congress put out a hugging Trump hugging Ducks Trump a war room put out statement saying that Trump will Deport migrants who eat pets K Harris will send them to your town I mean I don't this is like Obama eats dog all over again we did this Sam weren't you here for 2012 the Obama eats dog thing they're going back into the racist dog eating thing yeah know I remember and it's like I guess I'm both amazed and sort of uh impressed by how much they've jumped on it so quickly this morning I mean it's like Trump War Room Don Jr JD Vance house judiciary Benny Johnson Steve Cortez Steve Gast you know Andy caban all the people in and around uh the sort of trump PR operat I mean clearly this is like what they're going to hammer away at and it's xenophobic let's be honest about it right like sure there there may be some issues around public resources in Springfield and and it's tearing AP some of the community but like this is just it's Haitian xenophobia and this is Mark's right like this is plays into Old stereotypes that uh have been used against asan Americans for a while uh it's always been historically uh interesting to contrast how Republicans talk about Cuban Americans versus Haitian Americans wildly different rhetorical stances on Cuban Americans versus Haitian Americans but uh yeah are youing that melanin might have something to do with that Sam or just no I just think it's I just think it's remarkable and I will say as as someone who's been to Haiti on a couple occasions uh I will say on a moral on moral ground I think it's wrong uh they're wonderful people very kind people uh and do not deserve to be treated we have lots of patients in Orleans patients are the best more than very kind lot of pati um if I was uh Mark uh the magga guys that are all putting this out um sometimes it's hard to tell are they just getting their rocks off they enjoy it the laughs the cruelty or is there like a strategy here that's like people will actually talk about the migrant issue if instead of talking about it in a boring way we talk about it in a racist way about pet eating what what do you think I think by and large it's the first thing it's [ __ ] posting but then you know if you ask like well folks are talking about it right and that's important but in the end yeah you to JD's point before he sort of went you know off the the cat rails or what whatever the the right pet metaphor is there there is there is vote to had by talking to a community of 40,000 people when they just get an influx of 20,000 people just out of town right let alone out of state let alone out of country that's going to happen but then you know this starts to clock that way uh you know is this is this going to be harmful in Ohio I doubt it but uh I guess we'll have to see yeah the uh this reminds me of the story um is just very a piece because cats are in both of them but also just in the nature of the way it spreads uh a story that I think was one of my Magnum opuses uh which is before both of you were here at the bullworks you might not be aware uh but I did deep research on the story that at schools they were putting litter boxes in for C to pee in and I called several of the schools and this was happening in my life like my friends wives were saying to me like you know they're doing this at the school and I'm like are you sure they're doing it at the school and they're like I was like which school I always say which school they're like oh it's my friend Janie's kids school and I was like go ask Janie tell and then then you couldn't figure it out like you couldn't get to the bottom it because it was just this game of telephone that like spread throughout the whole country that was being pushed by Maga folks but it was trick down to kind of non-political people they're like I guess this is true and I and and it was not true obviously there are not cat litter boxes in your school if you've heard that YouTube viewer please uh don't believe it and ask the person to to name it and if you can find the litter box tell me because I'm still on a search for the first L box in isn't this the problem right like something gets lit up and goes and spreads virally online and then you have to like spend hours trying to chase it down to see if it's true and then it by the time you chase it down you know it's got tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of views like this but I will say this this weekend or or late last week Trump was talking about like oh kid little Jimmy goes to school and they're just going to perform a surgery on him and turn him into into a girl like that's just not true but like people are going to believe this [ __ ] people are going to believe it that's the problem that's why we got on here quick to try to to try to try to undermine the story before the untruth gets halfway gets all the way around the world so there you go cat no cat litter boxes in school no evidence of Haitian immigrants eating cats there is one accusation of a non- Haitian American potentially eating a cat 170 miles away from the Haitians but I Mark do you have final thought I have to say I have to say as a Miami resident that we do have an invasion of iguanas and there are people who do like to eat iguana tail uh and by the way I think if you could locally Harvest a GU tail you could probably sell it as a delicacy I just want to stress that I'm not saying Haitians I'm just saying like gu guil I would I would I would totally Tim you wouldn't you you you we were on a video you said you would never eat bear I'm sorry now this is normal this is I don't know I'm a homosexual I'm a homosexual I don't like the like the last [ __ ] thing that I could ever think about is I'm going to take a roadkill and I'm going to put it in my car because I plan to later skin it and then then is bear meat even edible do people eat baby bears people eat baby bears you would eat iguana tail come on get out yeah something there's something kind of I don't know uana it's sort of like Mediterranean I could see it's I could see it like next to octopus and like dipping it yeah I can that sounds like a secret Chutney or something yes that sounds way better than like picking up a dead animal off the side of the road and then eating it I think it's bear stew a Hardy Road Kill bear stew thank you samstein thank you Mar Caputo uh we'll be seeing you all here soon make sure to subscribe to the page for this essential content hey if you like this video and our content I'd love for you to become a bullwark plus subscriber you get access to bonus podcast secret podcasts and newsletters we put out every day plus some behind the-scenes takes that I don't always post on this feed in addition you can become part of the bullwark community come over to our substack and comment and meet other like-minded people we'd love to have you 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