At first glance, new billboards in Arizona look like Chick-fil-A’s iconic “Eat Mor Chikin” promos. But instead of cows, the billboards erected Tuesday feature four cats dressed in cow costumes.
“EAT LESS KITTENS,” the billboards say. “Vote Republican!”
Arizona’s Republican Party announced Tuesday that it had designed about a dozen of the billboards in the Phoenix area in response to false claims shared by some top Republicans that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating Americans’ pets. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who plans to visit Arizona on Thursday, amplified those claims at an ABC News debate on Tuesday, despite police telling local news outlets that there was no evidence of anyone eating pets.
In a news release, the Arizona GOP said the billboards are “a humorous, but sobering reminder of the stakes involved in the fight for secure borders and safe communities.”
“Our newest billboard highlights just how horrific things have become under the failed policies of ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris,” Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda said in a statement, referring to the vice president and Democratic presidential nominee’s role in the Biden administration working with three Central American countries to reduce unauthorized migration. “Trump is committed to securing our borders and ensuring that what we’ve seen elsewhere does not become the norm in our country.”
Rumors of immigrants hurting animals in Springfield, a city about 40 miles west of Columbus, appear to have started from a post first shared in a city Facebook group. A user claimed a friend of their neighbor’s daughter had found her lost cat hanging from a branch at a home where a Haitian lives.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, shared a post on X on Monday in which he cited unnamed “reports” claiming that people in Springfield “have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday called Vance’s claim “dangerous” misinformation.
“There will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is,” Kirby said at a news briefing.
At Tuesday’s debate, Trump said immigrants in Springfield are “eating the dogs,” “eating the cats” and “eating the pets of the people that live there.” With her microphone turned off, Vice President Kamala Harris laughed and said: “What? This is unbelievable.”
When moderator David Muir said Springfield’s city manager had stated that there were no credible reports of immigrants eating pets, Trump doubled down on his statement.
“I’ve seen people on television … the people on television claimed my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump said, interrupting Muir. “So maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”
Haitian immigrants are a growing population in Springfield, where they generally live and work legally, according to an FAQ on the city’s website.
But the top Republicans’ claims had already inspired the Arizona GOP’s billboard campaign, which the party used to make broader statements against illegal immigration.
“We’re not going to sit idly by while our communities are overrun by tens of thousands of ‘newcomers’ imported by Kamala Harris who have no interest in assimilating into our culture and have no regard for the laws of the United States,” Swoboda said in a statement.
A Chick-fil-A spokesman told The Washington Post that the restaurant chain wasn’t aware of the Arizona GOP’s billboards before Tuesday. He declined to comment on the design.
Yolanda Bejarano, chair of Arizona’s Democratic Party, accused the state’s GOP of committing “racist stunts.”
“The AZGOP’s weird AI-looking billboard is xenophobic and entirely unserious,” Bejarano said in a statement to The Post. “While the AZGOP focuses on online dog whistles, we are talking to voters about the issues they care about most.”
Robert Graham, who served as the Arizona GOP’s chair in the mid-2010s, said creating billboards based on rumors — and not directly addressing issues important to voters — was a “waste of money.”
“Americans right now are faced with making a decision: Who they want to elect into office, and especially the presidential office,” Graham told The Post. “They don’t want to have to filter through cutesy [messages] because they don’t have time for it.”
The Arizona GOP did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday but wrote on Facebook: “The media and Democrats are more concerned with billboards than with the deadly reality of the border crisis.”
The party was muddled in controversy at the start of this year after a leaked recording revealed that chairman Jeff DeWit dissuaded Kari Lake from running for the state’s Senate seat in 2024, prompting DeWit’s resignation. The Arizona GOP has seen significant election losses in recent years; neither of the state’s two senators are Republican, nor are Arizona’s governor, secretary of state or attorney general.