The far-right Proud Boys arrived in Springfield, Ohio, as Donald Trump doubled down on his promise to visit the city at the center of rumors about pet consumption.
Members of the group were seen marching amid reports that the KKK has been distributing recruitment leaflets in a city that has been hit by a wave of bomb threats targeting schools and universities.
About 20 members of the Proud Boys, some of them carrying flags and signs, were seen in videos and photos posted on social media.
Plans for a visit by the former president are still taking shape, his campaign team insists, after he repeated debunked claims that the city’s large Haitian population was killing and eating their neighbors’ pets.
Republican Party leaders have angrily dismissed the stories as “garbage” and called on him to stay away.
Members of the far-right group Proud Boys gathered in Springfield, Ohio
Proud Boys members carried flags and signs.
“Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex and is a little bit out of control,” said Mayor Rob Rue.
“We have received bomb threats in the last two days. We have received personal threats in the last two days and the number is increasing, because the national scene is turning to this issue.”
The FBI is investigating after Wittenberg University received a shooting threat on Saturday and a bomb threat on Sunday.
One school was placed on lockdown and two were evacuated Friday, and Springfield officials said “multiple facilities” were targeted in a bomb threat Thursday.
Trump electrified the presidential debate against Kamala Harris on Tuesday when he repeated rumors that immigrants in the city were “eating the dogs.”
“The people who have arrived are eating the cats. They are eating the pets of the people who live there. And this is what is happening in our country.”
His vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, has already made the same claims. The Ohio senator defended his position on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“If I have to create stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he told host Dana Bash.
“It comes from first-hand accounts from my constituents. I say we are creating a story, meaning we are creating the American media that focuses on it.”
Police and city officials have insisted there have been no credible reports of any immigrants harming their pets.
Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine called the claims “garbage” on ABC’s This Week.
“This debate has to end,” he said.
Donald Trump sent the debunked claims around the world during his presidential debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday, when he said: “The people who came. They’re eating the cats.”
A note on the door of Fulton Elementary School directing parents where to pick up their children after a bomb threat.
‘Look, there’s a lot of rubbish on the Internet. This is rubbish that’s just not true, there’s no proof of it.
‘Any comments on this, I think, are hurtful and do not help the city of Springfield or the people of Springfield.
“We need to focus on moving forward, not on eating cats and dogs. It’s ridiculous.”
The Proud Boys, which have been banned as a terrorist group in Canada, currently have five chapters in Ohio, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
They have been at the forefront of some of the most violent political clashes in recent years, and five of their leaders were charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 riots.
Former leader Henry Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the violence.
Donald Trump has distanced himself from the group since telling them to “stand back and stand by” during his 2020 presidential debate with Joe Biden.
Their arrival comes a month after about a dozen masked members of the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe staged a “march against Haitian immigration” in the city as rumours first began to emerge.
Members of the neo-Nazi armed group Blood Tribe, pictured in Florida, held a march in Springfield last month and helped spread rumors about pet eating online.
The group promoted online rumors, and member Drake Berentz spoke at a Springfield City Commission meeting on Aug. 27 to warn that “crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian they bring in.”
He was kicked out of the meeting, but the group’s leader, Christopher Pohlhaus, was elated after Trump mentioned the rumors in their presidential debate.
“The president is talking about it now,” one of its members wrote on the social media platform Gab.
“This is what real power looks like.”
