Animals have always played a role in political lore in the US, whether it’s a series of beloved and cuddly White House pets or Teddy Roosevelt’s love of horses that helped cement his robust public image.
But as the US’s traumatic 2024 election has played out, amid warnings of democracy under threat, multiple attempted assassinations of Donald Trump and fears of civil unrest, it seems that the political treatment of animals in US politics has also taken a disturbing turn.
Last week it emerged that Kevin Roberts, the architect of the extreme rightwing policy blueprint Project 2025, had told colleagues he’d once killed a neighbor’s pit bull with a shovel. Roberts said it was “a patently untrue and baseless story backed by zero evidence”.
But Roberts was not the first rightwinger to be involved in a dog fracas. He followed in the footsteps of the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem. She lost out on becoming Trump’s running mate after recycling a two-decade-old story designed to illustrate decisive leadership that involved her shooting of a hunting dog that didn’t hunt and had bitten members of her family.
But that wasn’t even the grimmest example of animal abuse linked to 2024 political players – which now includes already dead ones.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the noted environmentalist turned Trump-endorser, revealed himself as the architect of a decade-old caper to leave a dead bear cub in Central Park, staging it to look like a bike accident. Kennedy, who had been planning to skin the bear, called it “a little bit of the redneck in me”.
Then another RFK Jr scandal resurfaced, which involved him sawing off a dead whale’s head with a chainsaw and then transporting it from Cape Cod to his home in New York – something that has now attracted the attention of authorities.
Trump’s running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, was also not immune. He made comments about the country being “effectively run … via the Democrats, via the oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies” that were seen as insulting women across the US.
But Vance doubled down on the negative animals theme by embracing a false and racist rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump himself repeated the false story to 67 million Americans who watched his presidential debate with Kamala Harris. Civic life in Springfield was disrupted by bomb threats for days after.
Nor were Democrats immune from the trend of being on the wrong end of an animal story.
An out-of-control pet is a poor reflection of its owner, or taken to be, as Joe Biden found out. His personal polling was at its lowest this summer when his German shepherd, Commander, was sent away after biting three dozen White House staffers and Secret Service. One agent need stitches. East Wing tours were delayed.
“Pets and wildlife have always occupied a special place in presidential politics,” said the veteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf.
But usually they have been a positive image booster for those in the White House. There was Franklin D Roosevelt’s Scottish terrier Fala, AKA Murray the Outlaw of Falahill, and Harry Truman’s cocker spaniel. Bill Clinton sought the companionship of a brown labrador, Buddy, after the Lewinsky scandal broke. George W Bush had Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley.
“House pets are part of Americana,” Sheinkopf said.
But what is unusual is butchering bears and claiming people are eating pets. “It created an uproar because you just don’t eat your pets, right? It’s not what you do. It’s opened the presidential and vice-presidential candidates up to ridicule and sense of unbelievability.”
In this election cycle animals have become a powerful political cypher but a pet is also a way of showing commonality with many voters. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, 70% of US households own a pet, and 80% of them consider their pets to be family members.
Vance and Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, have a dog and cat each. Walz’s labrador mix, Scout, found internet fame when he got locked in a bedroom. He’s been taken to Dairy Queen for pup cups. The Walz family told Vogue that if Scout had a motto, it would be: “If I can reach it, I can eat it.”
Yet neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris have pets.
Trump, whose daughter-in-law Lara is a rescue dog advocate and helped to end greyhound racing in Florida, told a crowd in Santa Fe he’d like to have a dog but he’d look “a little phoney” walking it on the White House lawn.
Instead Trump has used dog-centric language as a political insult, including “choked like a dog”, “barked like a dog”, “sweated like a dog”, “lied like a dog”, “dumped like a dog” or was “fired like a dog”, and “cheated like a dog”.
Sadly, that is far more the spirit of 2024’s election battle than cuddly photo ops with dogs and cats.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Sheinkopf.
