‘Don’t eat cats and dogs,’ Biden tells voters while wearing Trump hat
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Joe Biden donned a Trump baseball cap and told a crowd of people “not to eat dogs and cats” during a light-hearted exchange on the campaign trail.
The US president was referring to wild claims repeated by Donald Trump during his debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the pets of the people that live there”.
Mr Biden was initially persuaded to wear his former opponent’s hat by a Trump supporter after a humorous back-and-forth between the two men.
It started off by Mr Biden offering to give his presidential hat to the Trump supporter, who asked him: “Are you going to autograph it?” Mr Biden said he would autograph the hat before the Trump supporter quipped: “Do you remember your name?”
The president joked back that he “doesn’t remember my name” because he’s “slow”, which sparked laughter among the crowd.
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The exchange continued with the Trump supporter labelling Mr Biden an “old fart” before the president pushed back and said “Yeah, I’m an old guy... You would know a lot about that.”
Mr Biden then quipped that he needed the man’s Trump hat and was urged to put it on by the Republican and the crowd in the fire station.
After initially saying “I’m not going that far”, Mr Biden eventually donned the Trump hat, earning applause from the crowd and the Republican supporter. “I’m proud of you now,” the Trump supporter said.
The president, speaking on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, said the bipartisan unity seen after the terror attack needed to return to the US.
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But that didn’t stop Mr Biden from mocking Trump’s claims that Haitian immigrants are “eating cats and dogs” in Springfield, the town that is now in the centre of a bizarre Right-wing conspiracy theory.
Trump’s claims angered the father of an 11-year-old boy who was killed last year when a minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant collided with his school bus. He accused Trump and JD Vance, his running mate, of using his son’s death for political gain.
“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone,” Nathan Clark, Aiden’s father, said.