Allen Johnson: Having Fido with some fava beans (and a nice Chianti)?

The Wall Street Journal sent a team of reporters to beleaguered Springfield, Ohio, last week to ferret out the truth about cats and dogs.

The headline says a lot: "Told Pet-Eating Was Untrue, Trump Team Spread It Anyway."

"Springfield, Ohio, officials informed Vance's staff rumors were baseless ," what we in the business call a deck headline added. "It didn't matter and now the town is in chaos."

But that was only the beginning of the story.

It recounts the bomb threats that have ensued — 36 at last count — targeting local schools and other institutions.

It notes how Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has sent state police to the town to bolster security for children as they returned to school.

It reports how, over the summer, outside neo-Nazi groups "had seized on a local controversy and fanned the narrative of pet-eating Haitians."

And it quotes Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance, defending his inflammatory rhetoric as a by-any-means-necessary act of noble desperation.

Vance told CNN that no one was paying attention to the plight of U.S. cities overrun by immigration "until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes."

Vance added: "If I have to create stories so the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

Never mind the myriad stories over the past year about problems with the influxes of immigrants into Chicago, New York and Denver, not to mention an NPR story about Springfield ... on Aug. 12.

The costs and rewards of mass immigration are a legitimate issue. Lying about them isn't a legitimate solution.

The private Facebook page post that helped ignite the cats-and-dogs nonsense was based (no kidding) on a rumor a woman had heard about her friend's daughter's cat. According to a site that debunks misinformation, Newsguard, the woman later admitted she had been mistaken.

Digging deeper, The Wall Street Journal reporters interviewed a person who had added fuel to the having Fido for dinner with some fava beans (and a nice Chianti) myth with a police report.

Springfield resident Anna Kilgore told police that her pet cat, Miss Sassy, had gone missing. Kilgore said at the time that she feared her pet had been abducted and eaten by Haitian neighbors.

The reporters had been referred to Kilgore by a Vance spokesperson as evidence that the catnapping was real.

As it turns out, Miss Sassy eventually showed up alive and well in Kilgore's basement.

Kilgore told the reporters that she and her daughter apologized to their Haitian neighbors. There's been no such contrition from Trump or Vance.

In fact, Trump merely embellished the embellishment, adding geese to the menagerie.

"Twenty thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended on a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life," Trump said at a rally in Tucson, Ariz. "Residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They're taking the geese."

As for the bomb scares, Trump brushed them off. "I don't know what happened with the bomb threats," he said.

Here are the facts, reports the Journal, whose executive chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, also runs Fox News:

Springfield was in a downward spiral, shrinking in population from 83,000 in 1960 to 59,000 in 2020.

According to DeWine, 15,000 Haitian immigrants came to the city legally, under the Temporary Protected Status provision passed by Congress in 1990 that can be granted to immigrants who are fleeing dangerous countries.

"Eager to work long shifts and do what it took to meet production goals," the Journal reported, Haitians boosted the Springfield economy. "New subdivisions sprang up in the cornfields outside town. New restaurants opened. The Haitian flag flew at City Hall."

But the schools struggled to accommodate so many non-English speakers and health care facilities were flooded with patients.

There have been issues as well with traffic accidents. In 2023 a Haitian immigrant plowed his minivan into a school bus, killing one student and injuring 20 others.

"Growth came with growing pains," the Journal reported.

Add to that misery a story that grew and grew in retellings with exaggerations and outright fiction ... until Trump and Vance got a hold of it.

More recently Trump has been mentioning a possible trip to Springfield.

Please, no.

Trump, who was in Wilmington Saturday, should do everyone a favor and stay far, far away from that unfortunate burg.

At least as far away as he has been from the truth about Springfield.

Executive Editorial Page Editor