Republicans Seem To Be A Far Greater Threat To Pets Than Immigrants

JD Vance, Donald Trump and different Republicans are clinging to a racist and thoroughly debunked lie {that a} group of legal immigrants in Ohio are abducting, killing and consuming individuals’s pets.

There’s zero truth to the claim. And but, there’s a mountain of proof — within the final week, month, 12 months and half-century — that it’s Republicans who pose the gravest risk to America’s animals.

Most not too long ago, a number of former colleagues of Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Basis and the person behind Undertaking 2025, told The Guardian that Roberts as soon as mentioned he’d killed a neighbor’s canine with a shovel.

Kenneth Hammond, who labored with Roberts within the historical past division at New Mexico State College in 2004, was one among three colleagues who shared the story with the outlet, which revealed its report on Tuesday.

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing within the hallway with numerous members of the school, together with me, {that a} neighbor’s canine had been barking fairly relentlessly and was, you understand, protecting the infant and doubtless the dad and mom awake and that he form of misplaced it and took a shovel and killed the canine,” Hammond mentioned.

One other colleague recalled Roberts sharing the story at a cocktail party he hosted, including that Roberts mentioned he’d thought of killing the canine’s puppies as properly.

Roberts advised The Guardian the story is “patently unfaithful.”

If he certainly killed the canine, Roberts would truly be in good firm. Quite a few different Republicans (and their supporters) have harmed or threatened — whether or not instantly or not directly — America’s animals in current historical past, some fatally. Together with:

Noem bragged in her autobiography about shooting a 14-month-old puppy as a result of she discovered it “lower than nugatory” as a looking canine. (The pet wasn’t superb at serving to her discover different animals to kill, so she killed it? Ironic!)

Noem additionally described how she killed a goat as a result of it was “nasty and imply” by taking pictures it with a shotgun after she “dragged him to a gravel pit.” Her first shot merely wounded the animal, however she’d solely introduced one shell, so she needed to go get one other one from the truck.

Due to RFK Jr.’s failed impartial presidential bid, we’ve discovered he’s cut a whale’s head off with a chainsaw, allegedly barbecued and eaten a dog (he maintains it was a goat), and deliberate to skin and eat a bear cub however obtained distracted and dumped the carcass in New York Metropolis’s Central Park as an alternative.

Sources told CBS New York the cub was discovered with “stab and slash wounds on its physique.”

Throughout a marketing campaign cease in 2014, the late senator from Mississippi wistfully recalled “doing all kinds of indecent things to animals” when he was youthful.

“It was enjoyable,” he mentioned. “It was an journey to be on the market within the nation and to see what goes on. Choosing up pecans … doing every kind of indecent issues to animals.”

Cochran didn’t elaborate, so we are able to solely speculate concerning the nature of his, um, indecency.

Kincannon killed his mom’s canine in 2018 “as a result of God advised him to.”

In keeping with police data obtained by The Associated Press, Kincannon emerged from his dad and mom’ house carrying solely his underwear and, whereas “lined in blood and canine hair,” advised officers that “each 1,000 years there must be a sacrifice and blood should be spilt.”

In 1986, Bost shot a neighbor’s beagle to death whereas it was in a penned enclosure as a result of, based on courtroom data, he was indignant it bit his daughter after she provoked it by chasing it. Police data present Bost however had no drawback letting his personal canine roam across the neighborhood.

Along with defending white supremacists, the nine-time Iowa Republican also defended dogfighting.

In 2007, King voted in opposition to a regulation that strengthened penalties for unlawful dogfighting and cockfighting, in addition to made it a felony to move animals throughout state traces for that function.

He additionally tried to defeat an modification that criminalized “bringing a baby to a dogfight or a cockfight.”

Former New York Rep. George Santos as soon as stole $3,000 from a GoFundMe supposed to cowl the price of lifesaving surgical procedure for a U.S. Navy veteran’s dying service canine.

Inhofe, who died in 2024, held annual “old world pigeon shoots,” by which a whole bunch of doves raised in captivity have been tossed within the air and shot by supporters as a part of a fundraiser.

An undercover video at one occasion confirmed that Inhofe and his allies left behind dozens of wounded birds to slowly die in a subject.

Inhofe ended the shooting events in 2017 after years of protest from animal rights teams.

Romney famously tied his canine, Seamus, to the roof of the household automotive throughout a 12-hour cross-country highway journey in 1983. The story dogged Romney throughout his 2008 and 2012 presidential runs.

However don’t examine Romney to Noem or RFK Jr.

“I didn’t eat my canine,” he told HuffPost earlier this 12 months, saying he resents the comparability. “I didn’t shoot my canine. I liked my canine and my canine liked me.”

Donald Trump’s namesake loves big-game hunting, having often traveled overseas to kill animals in international nations.

In 2019, Trump Jr. used U.S. authorities assets to kill an endangered sheep in Mongolia, for which the Mongolian authorities needed to challenge a allow retroactively.

And in 2017, he spent Earth Day shooting prairie dogs in Montana with the state’s present governor, Republican Greg Gianforte.