Former President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he plans to visit the city at the center of false claims about immigrants eating pets within the next two weeks as he tries to keep immigration at the center of the election battle.
His supporters roared when he made a raunchy joke about visiting Springfield, Ohio, during a rally on Long Island.
“You may never see me again,” he said to the delight of thousands who packed the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
“But that’s okay, you have to do what you have to do.”
For weeks, unsubstantiated claims about Haitian immigrants in the city eating cats and other pets have been circulating in the darkest corners of the Internet.
Donald Trump announced Wednesday night that he will travel to Springfield, Ohio, the center of false claims of immigrants eating their pets, in the next two weeks.
But they erupted last week when Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, spread an unfounded rumor that immigrants were hunting cats.
The claims were later denied by local authorities and later revealed to be based on a report of a missing cat that turned up safe and sound.
Vance has defended his actions, saying the stories highlight how communities in places like Springfield are struggling with the influx of arrivals.
An exclusive poll for DailyMail.com revealed that stories may be resonating with a portion of voters even if they are not true.
A survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted by JL Partners, found that more than a third believed Haitians ate cats, geese or other domestic animals.
At the same time, however, the poll shows Trump’s support plummeting among Hispanic voters, a segment that could decide the 2024 election.
Trump said he would also visit Aurora, California, which has been the subject of similar, debunked, claims about Venezuelan gangs.
This is all part of an effort to continue attacking Harris at the border.
He spoke about the impact in New York.
JL Partners surveyed 1,000 likely voters to find out their opinion on false claims that Haitians were eating their pets. The results have a margin of error of 3 percent.
Trump made some promises to his New York audience, vowing to rebuild the city’s transit system and designating Ground Zero as a national memorial.
“The hordes of illegal immigrants are being housed in luxury hotels at their own expense, while our great veterans live on the icy or steaming sidewalks just outside the main entrance where the immigrants enter the hotel,” he said.
“We have veterans lying on the streets in miserable conditions. And they are watching immigrants go up to the seventeenth floor of their suite. How crazy our country has become!”
Trump will be known as the “border president,” he said, while “Kamala will be known as his invader president.”
Trump made some promises to his New York audience, promising to rebuild the city’s transportation system and designate Ground Zero as a national memorial.
He ran through some of his greatest hits, boasting about the size of his audience (‘bigger than Elvis’), criticising ‘fake news’ and claiming the world had been at peace under his rule.
He then followed up with a series of baseless claims about his opponent, saying Harris wanted to pack the Supreme Court with 25 justices and defund the police.
Before heading to the suburbs, Trump stopped at a Bitcoin cafe in New York City to promote his family’s new cryptocurrency venture. He handed out burgers and announced that he will likely meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week.
Trump has long been seen as a thorn in the side of efforts to maintain support for Ukraine’s embattled leader by rallying Republicans against sending more weapons to combat the Russian invasion.
Before heading to the suburbs, Trump stopped at a Bitcoin cafe in New York City to promote his family’s new cryptocurrency venture.
But Zelensky will be in New York next week for a key United Nations meeting, sparking speculation that he might use the opportunity to make his case in person to the former president.
“Probably yes,” Trump told reporters in New York when asked if he would meet with the Ukrainian president.
In recent months, several world leaders or former leaders have met with Trump during visits to the United States.
Last month, Zelensky said he wanted to present a peace plan to Biden, Harris and Trump.
The former president made the remarks ahead of a campaign rally in Nassau County on Long Island.
The area could be crucial to his party’s continued control of the House. The seat is held by Anthony D’Esposito, one of 18 Republicans who represent a predominantly Democratic area.
Security was tight at Trump’s first rally after a second apparent assassination attempt on Sunday
Trump supporters gathered before the rally in Uniondale, New York
In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by about four percentage points on Long Island and in Nassau County by about 60,000.
However, Trump narrowly defeated him in neighboring Suffolk County.
The former president has claimed that New York is within his reach, but he would need to secure a large number of votes in these areas to offset the city’s strong Democratic lean.
The demonstration was marred by drama early in the morning amid false reports that explosives had been detected nearby.
Local police worked quickly to correct the online posts and said the allegations came from a civilian training a sniffer dog.
But this came too late for some news organizations, including DailyMail.com, which reported on tweets posted by a journalist claiming to be from the far-right group One America News Network.
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