Over the weekend, I had a conversation with a friend – a lovely, kind person – who is utterly horrified by Donald Trump and is, in particular, fixated with Trump’s viral moment from his debate with Kamala Harris: “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats”. So horrified is my friend by Mr. Trump that my own very public skepticism about his suitability for office was not enough – she wanted specific condemnation from me of the dog and cat-eating slur.
This claim of canine culinary preference, my friend says, is simply untrue. She has copious evidence that it is untrue – after all, no less an authority than the Conservative Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, a Republican who has endorsed Donald Trump for President, says it is untrue. Indeed, it is notable that not one single person has come forward with evidence that their own dog or cat was eaten in Ohio by a Haitian migrant.
My friend – who in the manner of most people outraged by a story, has followed it in much more detail than you or I might have – also pointed to Trump’s Vice Presidential candidate, JD Vance, who told CNN when challenged about the dog/cat story that “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes” – “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
To my friend, this was about as close to an admission of guilt as you’re ever going to get – “he made it up, and he’s admitting it”, she noted.
Now, I’m not sure that’s quite true about JD Vance – I understand that he says that by “creating stories” he meant “drawing attention to stories” – but one can perhaps forgive somebody for taking the words of a man seeking the second most powerful office on earth literally.
At this point, those of you who are used to what some readers appear to believe is my “relentless Trump bashing” might expect me to chime in with a defence of my friend – but I think she, and much of the western media, are missing the point, and I told her as much.
Donald Trump is, indeed, an inveterate, practiced, serial, and relentless liar. There are few even amongst his hardened fans who would not concede as much, though they might be inclined to re-cast those lies as “exaggerations” or “Trump’s manner of speaking”. Yet he also has a very rare gift and ability for saying something that is untrue and forcing his opponents in the process to defend a truth which is unpopular, as in this case. Consider this attack on Trump by the aforementioned Governor, Mike DeWine:
“There’s a lot of garbage on the internet,” he said, “and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.”
“DeWine said that the Haitians in Springfield have a right to be there, and that they are welcome there.
“What we know is that the Haitians who are in Springfield are legal,” he told host Martha Raddatz. “They came to Springfield to work. Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies. What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there. And, frankly, that’s helped the economy.”
DeWine also said that the influx of thousands of migrants in recent years has taxed the community’s resources and that Ohio was seeking help for that.”
The problem, in other words, is not that anyone in Springfield Ohio is cooking up Rex and Fluffy and making paella from their innards – the more mundane problem is that thousands of migrants from Haiti have arrived into a city that’s almost the dictionary definition of declining rust belt America and placed a strain on the resources of the community.
If you’re worried about that, do you vote for Trump – the fabulist who lies about dog-cooking – or do you vote for Kamala, the very sincere liberal who favours, in tone if not in effect, the imposition of more Haitians on Springfield and cities like it? It’s an unpleasant choice, reduced to a gut-check.
The populist defence of Trump – and the right in general – over stuff like this is basically exactly what I have just set out: That by speaking as he does, he draws attention to larger issues. That when he calls the FBI corrupt, for example, he provokes a gut-check moment about whether a voter trusts federal or government power, or prefers liberty from it to err on the safe side. It is in essence a form of communication by themes and instincts, rather than communication in truth or detail – and once those themes and instincts are correct, there’s no problem. Indeed if I had a penny for every time someone told me “Trump’s instincts are right” then I’d have – well, several quid.
Indeed, the left also communicates in themes and instincts. For example, Vice President Harris is currently running a minute-long television advert on abortion which is objectively dishonest: It claims that Trump, if elected, would force children raped by their parents to carry the child to term. Donald Trump has said he would not do so, and there is nothing in his extensive record of statements or policy choices as President that suggests he would. But the larger theme of the ad is simply “Republicans have bad instincts on abortion”. You either believe that, or you do not – it is an appeal to the gut, not to your ability to determine truth from falsehood.
To the partisan mind on either side, all this lying is is at once defensible and indefensible because the stakes of the election are all that appears to matter: The partisan is only ever outraged by the other side’s “lying” because he or she is convinced that their own side’s lying is simply the communication of “larger truths”. Thus, there exists, across the world, the kind of person who nods along to the Harris ad while tearing their hair out about Trump’s lies, and indeed vice versa.
Indeed, this is one of the reasons that so many people in the west have abandoned the left – because for years they did exactly what Trump is doing. When you call every single criticism of immigration racist, as so many liberal politicians and campaigners did, then don’t be surprised when even directly racist tropes – like the idea that a race of people are eating pets – starts to fall on the gut check line rather than the “is this true” line of people’s personal intellectual coding.
This is, I think, one of the single biggest impetuses behind what I call “own-the-libs-itis” – the notion on the right that the success or failure of an idea can be measured in progressive tears and outrages about it. So long have the public been gaslit that every critique of immigration is racist that many of them are now thrilled to see the left get a taste of its own medicine, and watch the strategy backfire in real time.
But of course, there are lessons to be learned here as well: If the lesson of “eating the dogs” is, as it should be, that the excesses of the left ultimately cost it the trust of the public, then surely “eating the dogs” is a lesson in itself for the right. Either that, or we’re all brilliant critics and very slow learners, at the same time.
Lie about the small things consistently, and people will eventually start to assume you are lying about everything. “The liberals are just as bad” is, after all, nothing more or less than an admission that your own side is just as shitty and awful as the very people you profess to believe have brought your civilisation to its knees. The right should just stick to the truth – it’s enough.