Politics
GOP senator tries, fails to defend racist theory about pet-eaters
There were a great many low points for Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, but two days later, one continues to stand out. After having been triggered by Vice President Kamala Harris’ comments about his rally crowdsthe Republican thought it’d be a good idea to embrace a racist anti-immigrant conspiracy theory.
“In [Springfield, Ohio] they’re eating the dogs,” the former president said as part of a longer rant. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
In reality, of course, Trump had no idea what he was talking about. He might’ve convinced himself that the crackpot theory has merit, but it does not, and local officials have thoroughly discredited this ugly nonsense.
Nevertheless, roughly 24 hours after the debate, Sen. Bill Hagerty sat down with BLN’s Kaitlan Collins, who asked the Tennessee Republican whether his party’s presidential nominee would’ve been better off avoiding the racist theory for which there is no evidence. The senator replied:
Well, you talk about evidence. I’ve heard conflicting reports. There’s conflicting evidence. There’s a lot of information on the internet that this is happening. … The city officials aren’t the only source. There are plenty of people who are saying this is happening.
This reminded me of a story from eight years ago.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was speaking in Ohio when a man rushed the stage, prompting Secret Service agents to intervene. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the incident proved inconsequential.
But the then-candidate insisted at the time that the man in question had ties to ISIS, pointing to online evidence that turned out to be false. As longtime readers might recallNBC News’ Chuck Todd asked the Republican about his willingness to substantiate odd claims with bogus evidence.
“What do I know about it?” Trump replied. “All I know is what’s on the internet.”
It was a powerful, pre-election summary of one of Trump’s most important flaws: He has no meaningful critical thinking skills, and he lacks the wherewithal to assess the reliability of random nonsense he finds online. Before, during and after his presidency, the Republican has shown that he’s not much different from that weird guy you know via Facebook who keeps sharing wild-eyed, all-caps tirades about some new conspiracy he uncovered in the fever swamps.
But just as importantly, Trump’s refrain — “All I know is what’s on the internet” — is a phrase that now summarizes how too much of the Republican Party processes current events.
For example, when a madman attacked House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in 2022, a variety of GOP officials disseminated disinformation about the violent attack. Why? Because they saw some garbage online.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. Ask Republicans why they continue to believe ridiculous election conspiracy theories, and they’re likely to point to nonsense they found online. Ask them about their opposition to Covid vaccines, and you’ll probably get a similar response. Ask those caught up in the QAnon delusion how they slipped into the madness, and many will say the same thing.
The point is not that all online news is wrong. I publish online commentary for a living, so I’m the last person who’d encourage folks to reflexively disregard information from the internet.
Rather, the point is that major political parties and politicians seeking the public’s trust need to be able to distinguish between credible information from legitimate outlets, and sheer madness that happens to reinforce their preconceived ideas.
Republicans, in other words, not only need to choose good information over bad, they also need to understand how to choose good information over bad. As Bill Hagerty helped demonstrate, it’s a skill too much of the party seems to lack right now.
As national security attorney Bradley P. Moss lamented“The Party of Lincoln and Reagan has been reduced to ‘I saw something online.’”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
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