‘South Park’ Fans Troll the GOP For Flip-Flopping on Puppies
In an effort to promote the Trump administration's efforts to save America by arresting toddlers and grandparents, Republicans have seemingly borrowed a strategy from that one National Lampoon cover.
The House Judiciary GOP social media account recently posted a picture of an adorable Beagle. Why? Because “Freddie was kicked by an illegal alien,” the post reads. “Should that illegal alien be deported? Democrats say NO!”
It doesn’t take much effort to learn that in the real incident, which happened last June, Freddie wasn’t actually “kicked by an illegal alien.” The dog’s attacker was a 70-year-old Egyptian man, a “visa holder who was visiting the U.S. for tourism and to see family.” And he only made it as far as the airport before Freddie, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection “agriculture detector,” called attention to the man’s “suitcase full of illegal produce.”
The man was deported, and “ordered to pay the veterinarian's fee” – but he wasn’t trying to take up residency in the U.S., he was trying to smuggle beef, rice and eggplant into the country. And as far as we can tell, no Democratic lawmakers objected to this course of action.
A number of people took issue with the recent post, not because it was so blatantly factually-inaccurate, but because it’s a little late for Republicans to claim to be the party of dog safety, considering that Trump’s secretary of homeland security admitted to going full “bad guy from John Wick” on a literal puppy.
In her memoir, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Kristi Noem famously recounted how she gunned down a 14-month-old dog named Cricket after it attacked her neighbor’s chickens. But in fairness to Noem, dog trainers are a lot more expensive than ammunition.
In case anyone had forgotten about this ugly incident, Trey Parker and Matt Stone reminded us all when South Park’s 27th season kicked off this past summer. In the second episode, “Got a Nut,” Noem brutally put down every dog she could see, culminating with a pet shop killing spree in the show’s final moments.
Noem blasted South Park for its “petty” jokes about her cosmetic surgeries, but apparently didn’t have anything to say about all the cartoon puppy murders.
So naturally, when The House Judiciary GOP tried to sell a false story about dog abuse to demonize immigrants, a whole lot of people responded with screengrabs of Noem’s South Park character proudly satiating her canine bloodlust.
Clearly the $50 million that the Trump administration allegedly spent trying to combat this image of Noem didn't work.