Dog Fight: Five Pugs, a Poodle, and Donald Trump

Presidential Fact Checking with Bone-a-Fido, a Pet Store in Ohio

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris | Credit: Courtesy

The Morning After: Ahhhh, Wednesday morning! Tuesday night treated me kindly. For starters, I managed to sleep all the way to 4 a.m. For me, that qualifies as sleeping late. As I went searching the sidewalk for my morning newspaper — yes, I subscribe — I was greeted by a euphorically fall-like chill in the air. The fever had snapped; our heat wave — at least for the time being — was over.

And then, of course, there had been the presidential debate from the night before.

Oh yes, that. While it may not have been everything I dreamed it could be, it went very much to my liking. Every time Kamala Harris offered Donald Trump a fuse, he grabbed it, lit it on fire, and proceeded to pour gasoline over his head. And Harris, being well-prepared, came armed with no shortage of fuses..

The national sugar high — much reported on since Harris replaced the ailing, aging Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential stalking horse — was still intact. At least for the time being, hope and joy remains my cocktail of choice.

Shaken, not stirred, of course.

But even so, reality still remains reality. As I leaned down to pick up the Los Angeles Times, I noticed a team of gleaners across the street, rummaging through my neighbors’ recycling containers for bottles and cans they can redeem at the Gutierrez Street recycling center.

That’s a tough way to make a living. But the economics of survival in Santa Barbara favor the lucky and the toughhois

The gleaners were earlier than usual. Usually they show up — middle-aged couples impeccably dressed as if on their way to a Mexican evangelic church service — after most people have walked their dogs and gone to work.

No doubt these were some of the immigrants Trump has been bashing as predatory escapees from insane asylums, prisons, and every throw-away-the-key gulag he’d like to put them in. Technically, I suppose it might be a crime to “steal” recyclables that would otherwise go to MarBorg. But can you really steal something that someone else threw away?

No doubt I should have shouted into the darkness asking how many dogs and cats they’d eaten in the past week. This, after all, was Trump’s big revelation from the Presidential Debate: “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating — they are eating the pets of people that live here.” The “They” in Trump’s rant were Haitian immigrants who’d settled in the small town of Springfield, Ohio.

Reading the paper, I saw how Springfield’s city manager denied there was any evidence of the aforementioned pet eating. Likewise, a spokesperson for the Springfield police department stated there was absolutely no evidence to substantiate such claims. Trump dismissed such denials the night before with one of his customary of-course-that’s-what-you’d-expect-them-to-say waves.

Though I write this column under the fictitious pseudonym of a female dog, I still remain — in actual reality — a bona fide reporter. So I picked up the phone and called up Bone-a-Fido, a pet supply shop in Springfield, to get the real low down. Certainly a shop with a name like that would know.

The clerk who answered said he knew of no people who had had their pets eaten, let alone by immigrants. He knew of no one who knew anyone who knew anyone, he said. And being a pet store operator in a small town, he expressed great confidence he would have known.

The social media site, by the way, that had suggested — falsely — that J.D. Vance, Trump’s VP candidate, was engaging in sexual congress with cracks between couch cushions, is now the same source that the much maligned Mr. Vance is using to spread tall tales about pet-chomping Haitians.

Elon Musk — known to have an especially firm grasp on alternate reality — has likewise entered the meme swapping act, along with Charlie Kirk, a big shot conservative pushing Trump’s candidacy.

Personally, I was bitterly disappointed to hear all this was a hoax. I had watched the debate with friends up the street whose home was occupied by a pack of ill-behaved, entitled pug dogs. About five of them. They jumped around so much it was impossible to get a reliable count. Also joining the ruckus was an obstreperous, pint-sized, yap dog who was visiting. Where were all the pet-eating Haitian immigrants when I needed them? Like cops, they were no where to be found.

Some of you might remember that when I watched the disastrously depressing debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden with these same friends several months ago, their pugs had somehow gotten into my shoulder bag and stole my wallet. (They insist the wallet fell out of the bag and their dogs were kind enough to have found it for me.) The good news is that my wallet remained intact after this visit.

The other good news was that Harris more than held her own. She may still seem a little too canned for my taste, like an actor playing an aspirational, inspiring politician. But when it comes to prosecuting a point, Harris is the real deal, and her fast ball carries major league heat. Trump, who famously declined to prepare for the event, never had a chance.

Post script: At the end of the debate, it was announced that pop mega star Taylor Swift officially endorsed Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. She needed to do so, she explained, because some AI content pirate had released an ad indicating she had endorsed Trump. Naturally, Trump had nothing to do with this.

Swift is the exclamation mark of doom where Trump is concerned. Not even Bruce Springsteen enjoys the intensity of adoration as Swift does from her gargantuan fan base.

In the past year, the cultural zeitgeist has shifted profoundly where women are concerned. And it’s not just Taylor Swift. Look at women’s sports. Caitlin Clark? Hello? Women’s professional basketball?

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the hottest game in Santa Barbara happens to be high school flag football. Played by, for, and of young women. It’s fast; it’s intense. It’s exciting. It’s the real deal without the brain damage of football with helmets and pads.

My point here is that Trump can legitimately claim victory that his hand-picked Supreme Court majority just repealed Roe v. Wade, the ruling that had guaranteed women’s right to choose for 50 years. But in winning that battle, he lost the war.

What‘s the expression? Hoist by his own petard. That’s the one. That means to be blown off one’s feet by the explosive force of one’s own farts.

That’s what happened to Trump with Roe v. Wade. He just doesn’t know it yet. But I do. No wonder I slept till 4.

Ahhh morning!