Francis Ford Coppola is the latest celebrity to address Donald Trump‘s debate comments accusing immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating pets.
“I really was infuriated during the debates, when Haitian people were disparaged,” the filmmaker wrote in a post shared on Instagram. “I feel Haitian people are among the most kind, generous, talented, wonderful I have ever known. They have never been forgiven for winning what was a slave-revolt, and have been punished ever since they liberated themselves.”
Coppola added that he finds the pet-eating claims “so outrageously insulting to a brave, creative and absolutely wonderful people, I cannot tolerate or remain silent.”
He accompanied his message with a still from the Haitian film Freda by Gessica Généus, which Coppola notes he supported.
During Tuesday’s debate, the former president went on a rant about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he claimed. Moderator David Muir said on the air during the debate that the Springfield city manager had said there were “no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
As The Washington Post reported, the rumor started after an account on X (formerly Twitter) called End Wokeness posted a screenshot on Sept. 6 of a Facebook post from a private group called Springfield Ohio Crime and Information, in which someone warned that a neighbor’s daughter’s friend lost her cat and later found it at a house where a group of people from Haiti were living, with the cat hanging from a branch, seemingly being carved up to eat.
The day ahead of the debate, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance tweeted, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
A video from last month has also made the rounds on social media of a woman being arrested in Ohio after allegedly eating a cat. Conservative social media accounts saw it as evidence of the claims about immigrants. However, the arrest occurred in Canton, not Springfield. A Canton police department representative told the Post that the woman is not Haitian; she is a “US citizen that was born in Canton, Ohio.”
Springfield, Ohio, native John Legend also spoke out against Trump’s remarks, sharing some history of population changes in the city in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
Legend said, in part, “Nobody’s eating cats, nobody’s eating dogs. We all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment. How about we love one another?”
