Leah Feiger: Right. Obviously, what I think at least stood out the most to us in the WIRED political debate room as we watched in disbelief was the conspiracy and the lie that Haitian immigrants were illegally crossing the border into the United States and camping out and stealing and eating people’s dogs and cats and pets.
Donald Trump (archived audio): They are eating the dogs. They are eating the cats and the pets of the people who live there.
Leah Feiger: This is not happening. It is happening in some ways, but this was a topic of discussion that has been coming up for the last 36 hours. JD Vance has been adding fuel to the fire. He’s been tweeting about it. Congress. This has been everywhere. Trump waded into the debate. That was crazy, guys. That was so wild. It seemed like a fever dream.
Makena Kelly: The difference between how it played out online before the debate and how it was received when Trump actually said it was huge. Because when you look online, when people were discussing this whole conspiracy about cats and eating them and whatnot, all of that, for the most part, was like a joke. It seemed like it was mostly nonsense among a lot of these creators who were posting about it. Then just seeing it taken so seriously and literally on the debate stage with Trump, I think that was the shift in perspective that made it all like, what the hell is he doing?
Tim Marchman: Yes, I have a conspiracy theory about this, which is that Trump was briefed to allude to it, but to stay away from it. Because very early on in his first statement, he mentioned Springfield, Ohio, very directly, where the conspiracy theory says this is happening. He seemed very smug and self-satisfied when he said that. My base, the people who are at Truth Social…
Leah Feiger: They will know.
Tim Marchman: …they know what’s going on in Springfield. But he didn’t say anything. Then he started talking about it after Harris provoked him by mentioning that people had left his rallies early, which were endless and boring and repetitive. He started getting visibly angry and started talking about how horrible the economy is and how horrible post-apocalyptic America is. He says in Springfield, he can’t bring himself to say it. He says in Springfield, and then he just says, “They’re eating cats. They’re eating dogs.” It’s so lurid and ridiculous. Then what he does next is he says, almost meekly, “The people on TV said they took his dog to eat it.” Almost childlike tone. It was really an amazing moment. I really got the impression that he knew he wasn’t supposed to be talking about this, I guess.
Leah Feiger: I think you’re right. To me, he didn’t actually sound childish. He sounded like the grandparent or older relative you tell to turn off Fox News. That’s not true. That’s not right. He felt very old at the time. He was rambling, he wasn’t sure. I guess my question here is, with all these conspiracies that he brought up again like he did in the June debate with Biden, that Democrats support abortion after nine months, which is unequivocally false. Honestly, there were so many you couldn’t even list them. My question is, does it matter? The internet was spinning, the liberal internet was excited. CNN and MSNBC pundits were saying, “This was crazy. Harris beat him, etcetera, etcetera.” I don’t know. This race is really not about who’s more eloquent or who can tell the truth better or more, and that seems a little naive right now. It’s actually about who can mobilize their base. The question is whether Trump managed to mobilize his base with his litany of conspiracies tonight. Was it convincing?
