USA TODAY Given all the uproar over GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s baseless, utterly false and profoundly racist claims that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in an Ohio town, I would likely to make a public statement that is supported by an equal amount of evidence: “Not long ago, billionaire Elon Musk ate my cat, Mr. Smushyface. Days later, Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, stole and then barbecued and ate my dog, Zoe. I remained quiet about these incidents for fear other tech bros like Musk and Vance might come for my hamster, Dennis. But after much thoughts and prayer, I have decided to honor the memories of Zoe and Mr. Smushyface by letting the world know what I claim to be the truth.” For those fortunate enough to not yet be aware of the “immigrants are eating our pets” allegations that bubbled up from the right-wing fever swamps and got spouted by Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate, here’s the deal: A random Facebook post, grounded in something along the authoritative lines of “I heard from a friend of a friend’s kid,” claimed a cat went missing and was (maybe) eaten by a Haitian immigrant. It's true that JD Vance ate my dog because I wrote it on the internet There’s no evidence of that happening, of course. But xenophobic fearmongers saw it is a perfect way to monger some xenophobic fear. So Musk started trumpeting the ludicrous claim on X, the enormous social media platform he owns, and then Vance was babbling about it and then Trump spoke the words no presidential-debate-watcher ever imagined they’d hear, saying of Springfield, Ohio: “In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.” OK. If an actual former president who is also the Republican Party’s standard-bearer and its presidential nominee is so concerned about a fabricated story aimed at dehumanizing an entire swath of people, he damn well better be equally concerned about my story, which is true because I read it on the internet. (Granted, what I read on the internet was from my own social media post, but that’s not important.) My brave admission that Elon ate my cat Here’s how this real-because-I-say-it-is story of Vance and Musk being ravenous pet devourers developed. On Monday, I bravely posted the following on X, the social media cesspool formerly known as Twitter ‒ “True story: Elon Musk ate my cat. Please share your own story of Elon Musk eating your pet.” The response was overwhelming and revealed my pet was far from the only victim of Musk’s decidedly un-American appetite. Others came out of the we’ve-lost-our-pets-to-hungry-tech-bros closet, with posts that included: “Elon Musk ate my precious bearded dragon Cupcake.”