President Biden drew some laughs during an appearance at a Pennsylvania firehouse on Wednesday after being asked whether he remembered his name, donning a Trump hat and appearing to tell the crowd “don’t eat dogs and cats.”
Biden visited a firehouse in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, near where passengers and crew members of United Flight 93 died on Sept. 11, 2001, after interrupting the hijacking of their plane and crashing into a field. The Flight 93 National Memorial held its 23rd annual observance in Shanksville to commemorate the passengers and crew of the flight.
Video from Biden’s appearance shows him speaking with a man wearing a Trump hat and offering to trade him his own hat with the presidential seal on it for the Trump hat.
When the man asks Biden if he’ll autograph the hat for him, Biden agrees.
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“Do you remember your name?” a man asks.
“I don’t remember my name. I’m slow,” Biden jokes as the crowd chuckles.
When Biden trades the man the presidential hat for the Trump hat, the man asks Biden if he wants his autograph on the Trump hat, to which Biden responds, “Hell no!” as the crowd laughs.
When a person in the crowd yells “put it on,” referring to the Trump hat, Biden says, “I’m not going that far!” He eventually puts the hat on his head, drawing claps and cheers from the crowd.
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But what came out of Biden’s mouth next raised some eyebrows.
“Remember, no eating dogs or cats,” the president said to the crowd.
Biden may have been referring to claims that former President Trump made during his debate with Vice President Harris on Tuesday that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating residents’ dogs and cats.
Officials have said there have been no credible or detailed reports about the claims.
The claims first surfaced on Sept. 6 in a post on X that shared what looked like a screengrab of a social media post apparently out of Springfield, Ohio. The retweeted post talked about the person’s “neighbor’s daughter’s friend” seeing a cat hanging from a tree to be butchered and eaten, claiming without evidence that Haitians lived at the house.
The accompanying photo in the post showed a man carrying what appeared to be a Canada goose by its feet. That post continued to get shared on social media.
While officials have said there is no substantial evidence to the claims, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has announced he’ll be funneling resources to help ease the influx of some 20,000 Haitian migrants that have arrived in the city of Springfield legally under the Biden-Harris administration in the last several years.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
