Remember how “childless cat ladies for Harris” absolutely blew up, in the wake of JD Vance’s toxic take on American voters? It seems Donald Trump‘s campaign is trying to get in on that energy, and it is not going well.
To start with, the campaign — in its classic weird fashion — chose a strange target for its latest marketing push. Rather than zero in on the “childless cat ladies” Vance offended with his thoughtless remarks, or even aim elsewhere and pull in dog owners or something similar, it seems Trump is now looking to earn the cat vote.
Not the cat owner vote, mind you, but actual votes from cats. A sudden influx of eerie, unnerving AI images harkened in this new campaign strategy with a slew of “Cats for Trump” images that in no way explain just why Donald “grab ’em by the pussy” Trump thinks courting felines is his path to the White House. Also, maybe less surprisingly, this bizarre bit of campaign whimsy arises from a pit of virulent racism and xenophobia.
What on Earth is the new “Cats for Trump” campaign?
First off, so sorry to tell you this, but “Cats for Trump” is very real. A quick search on X will reveal countless posts trumpeting Trump as the cat candidate of choice, and its all due to a fringe bit of news that’s quickly becoming a right-wing talking point.
Up in Ohio, a woman Allexis Telia Ferrell was recently charged in association with several offenses, including injuring animals. According to various reports and a wave of escalating online rumors, the woman killed and consumed a pet cat ahead of her arrest, something that’s sparked a new angle of attack among opponents of Kamala Harris.
Ferrell has lived in America for the last six years, so all those claims of Haitian immigrants abruptly flooding into Ohio to eat your pets fall flat immediately, but there are also incredibly scarce reports of anything else of the sort happening. While it may be true that Farrell killed, and even ate, that cat, her abhorrent act points to a severe mental health issue on her part, not a reflection of immigrants to the United States; and in any case, it’s not true that cat killing is a new fixture in the Biden era of U.S. politics.
Despite that fact, the far-right is latching onto the new “cats for Trump” train with the same glassy-eyed zeal they put into anything touted by the orange man, and insisting that Haitian immigrants — or “illegals,” if you ask right-wingers — are taking over Ohio and downing family pets like Joey Chestnut at a hot dog eating competition.
It’s all leading to strange developments on social media. A perusal of anything cat-related on X will currently yield a strange argument, as Trumpers flood the site with disinformation, an unmistakable white-supremacist zeal, and uncanny, awful AI images of cats touting their support for Trump, while opponents of the flagrant felon clap back with a clear dismissal of the attempted campaign angle.
Can we talk about the above image for a moment? Putting aside the weird artificiality that comes along with anything AI generated and the strange decision to specifically market to felines, let’s zero in on those paws. I’m sorry to tell you this, humans of Earth, but those are not cats. Many of the creatures pictured above have a minimum of six paws, and they’re giving far more Flerken than they are feline.
That’s an issue across pretty much every single image contributing to the trend, as MAGAs discover that the art of AI is actually a touch harder than it appears. Its also leading to some very amusing conversations, as people both clap back at the attempt to pull in the cat vote, and also poke fun at Trump for targeting a demographic that is famously incapable of voting.
Someone probably should have told Trump and his team this months ago, but cats — whatever their stance on immigration — are ineligible to vote in U.S. elections. In some states, like Texas, it actually takes some serious work to vote, and cats simply don’t have access to the multiple forms of identification required to cast a ballot. Besides, how would they get the time off on voting day? Cats are notoriously busy coughing up hairballs, wreaking havoc around the house, and then sleeping off said havoc. There’s no way they can carve out several hours to stand in a voting line.
None of that matters to the Trump campaign, of course, who’s lack of actual policy points or a single braincell to share between them necessitates weird tangents just like this one. Its become a major talking point for both JD Vance and Trump himself, who went so far as to bring up the issue during his first debate against Harris. He attempted to repeat the same claims rattling around his social media echo chamber, added dogs into the mix, and broadly proclaimed that “the people that came in” are “eating the pets” of the people of Springfield.
Try as he and Vance might, the latest Trump campaign push is doomed to fail. It was a weird effort on the failed former president’s part, and it’s officially doing far more for Harris at this point than it is for him. It’s mostly serving to resuscitate the “childless cat ladies” conversation, which (unfortunately for Trump) targets a demographic far more likely to actually show up on election day, and likewise illuminates the fragile mental state of the Republican candidate. Trump and Vance are only making enemies with this latest attempt to smear the Biden administration, but hey — at least they’ve got a shot at the cat vote.
Published: Sep 11, 2024 03:10 pm