Donald Trump has a curious relationship with dogs. Firstly because he doesn't have one. Which, in his position, is exceptional. Before his arrival at the White House in 2017, no president of the United States since Theodore Roosevelt (who adopted around ten) had had the audacity to do without a dog. To name only the most recent, Joe Biden walked Champ, Major and Commander (the latter having been ousted from the White House in 2023, after a report of twenty-four bites on personnel, including the Secret Service); Barack Obama threw the ball to Bo and Sunny (two Portuguese water dogs). George W. Bush owned several Scottish terriers, the best known being Barney, and two English springers. But Donald Trump doesn't like dogs. He hated Chappy, his ex-wife Ivana's poodle, who reciprocated him.
On the other hand, he never hesitated to use the canine metaphor in his speeches. Until recently, it was exclusively pejorative: so-and-so was “fired like a dog”another “sweated like a dog”. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State organization killed by American special forces in 2019, “died like a dog”.
But if you ignore all that and Google “Trump dog,” a completely different relationship between the statesman and animals emerges. The first occurrence is this sentence pronounced on September 10, during the debate with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the White House, on the subject of Haitian immigrants from the small town of Springfield (Ohio): “They eat the dogs, they eat the cats, they eat the pets of the people who live there. »
It doesn't matter if it's fake news: Donald Trump is now proud to appear alongside our beloved companions. Moreover, the next day, he posted on his Instagram account an AI-generated photo showing him aboard Air Force One surrounded by a myriad of cats – and, eccentricity of artificial intelligence, ducks. A development which illustrates the extent to which the promotion of pets, even for a politician declaring himself “outside the system”, has become essential in political communication.
Kamala Harris doesn't have a four-legged friend either. Not even a cat, despite the persistent rumor. The current Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, described, in 2021, the Democrat as “childless cat lady” (« childless cat lady »). An old misogynistic expression aimed at discrediting women who engage in politics while claiming to defend family values.
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