On the campaign trail in Arizona today, Donald Trump repeated a false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are abducting people's pets.

A recording of 911 calls even show residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town's geese. They're taking the geese. You know where the geese are in the park, in the Lake? And even walking off with their pets. My dog's been taken. My dog's been stolen. This can only happen. These people are the worst.

He is repeating something that he amplified to 67 million people on Tuesday night during that debate. Except then, of course, Trump said that they are not only taking pets, but also eating them. As officials have said, and we have repeated endlessly on air, there are no credible reports that that is happening. Pippu to Judge is back with me. I think what's important about this is that this isn't just something that's happening online or on the debate stage, the City Hall in Springfield, Ohio, today had to be evacuated because of a bomb threat. Luckily, everything was okay. But just to see the impact that something like this could be having on people's lives, what do you make of what's happening?

This is a strategy, and there's even more to it than demonizing immigrants, although that's obviously part of what he's doing. This is a strategy to get us talking about the latest crazy thing that he did, whatever urban legend he amplifies. Right now, it's about people eating cats or geese or whatever, because he cannot afford for us to be talking about his record. He doesn't want us talking about the fact that we lost manufacturing jobs on his watch even before COVID, which is why the United Auto Workers are against him. He doesn't want us talking about the fact that his main economic policy promise he actually kept was to cut taxes for the rich. He doesn't want us talking about how he demolished the right to choose in this country, that he's the reason that even IVF could be banned in many places in this country. The last thing he wants us to do is to talk about his record or his agenda. So what he wants us talking about is whatever crazy nonsense he can thrust into the center of the Internet and the media conversation, which this week happens to be the stuff about eating cats or dogs or geese or whatever.

So you think it's just a distraction technique?

Yeah, but it's one that isn't harmless. It's affecting this community, and it contributes to this bigger picture of demonizing immigrants. But again, this is strategic. I don't give him credit for much, but whether it's this, whether it's blurting out a racist remark in an auditorium full of black journalists, as he did a few weeks ago, whether it's choosing 9/11 of all days to invite a 9/11 truher who said it was an inside job with him. All of these things are to a purpose, and the purpose is to do something so outrageous that we have to talk about it, that journalists have to go in for no other reason than to run it down and debunk it when it's false, and to try to suck up all the oxygen into that so that we're not talking about his profoundly unpopular policy agenda, Project 2025, and all of the failures of his actual time in office.

Yeah, of course, the Project 2025 founder, Trump, they've tried to distance themselves from that. But it's interesting what you say about why they're saying this, because I spoke to Senator J. D. Vance after the debate and pressed him on this, and he said essentially that they were, even if it wasn't true, they were glad they were bringing it up because it drew attention to what's happening in Springfield. Listen to what he had to say.

We've heard from a number of constituents on the ground, Kaitlyn, who both first-hand and second-hand reports saying this stuff is happening. So they very clearly, meaning the people on the ground dealing with this, think that it is happening.

Senator, you talked about that your office has gotten a lot of reports. I mean, if someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn't mean they saw Bigfoot. You have a sense of responsibility as a running mate, and he certainly does as the candidate to not promote false information, right?

It's a totally fair point, but nobody's calling my office and saying that they saw Bigfoot. What they're calling and saying is we're seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats, and city officials aren't doing anything about it.

The other part of that answer was he was saying that even if they have to meme their way to get attention on Springfield, which has had 20,000 Haitian migrants move there, which is more nuanced than how it's been portrayed. He was saying it's basically worth spreading information that may not be true, that we know is not true.

Yeah, there's lots of different, simultaneous reasons why he's going to spread lies. I still think the main one has to do with distracting from their own agenda and the things that make the Trump-Vance ticket and policies, and JD Vance in particular, so unpopular. Now, there's also, obviously, a pretty dark and twisted picture that he's painting of immigration. Earlier Today, I saw that J. D. Vance went on TV and said that if immigration were part of how countries become prosperous, then, America would be the most prosperous country in the world, which makes me wonder, what country does J. D. Vance think is the most prosperous country in the world since he doesn't think it's America? Also, does he really think that immigration has nothing to do with American prosperity? Most Americans disagree. By the way, most Americans also disagree with Donald Trump's decision to kill the bipartisan border bill that Kamala Harris has pledged that she would sign if it came to her. So rather than have us talking about that, he wants us talking about people allegedly eating cats, which is not happening. And then the other thing they'll do, of course, is because this is a country of 300 million people, they'll probably sooner or later find some case where somebody somewhere did something weird to a cat and try to make that into a reason to prolong this debate so that we could be talking about anything but Donald It's still Trump's track record of destroying jobs in this country and destroying the right to choose and the fact that if given the chance to do so again, that's what he would double down on.

You brought up how Trump sunk the bipartisan immigration plan that Lankford and Murphy and others put together. Harris brought that up, too, on the debate stage. It's been the one point that she turns to on immigration, which is one of her weakest polling areas, immigration in the economy. Is that enough for voters to just say, Well, Trump sunk this plan that didn't come until about earlier this year, February or March, and therefore, he's being hypocritical. Or do voters deserve to hear more about what she would do on immigration?

Well, I think certainly it's an important data point from the past that tells you how unserious they are about solving the problem. In fact, they need the problem to get worse so they can keep campaigning on it. But I do agree that every election is about the future. That's why she talked about what she would do if a bill like that came to her desk. Every issue that we're talking about the recent past, it's with a view toward the future. So For example, when she points out the fact that in this administration, they were able to get the cost of insulin for seniors down to $35, it's not just that that's the thing that happened and therefore we should be rewarded politically. It's that if Republicans stopped are locking us, we could have $35 a month insulin for every American and not only for seniors. Whether it's an issue like that, an issue like climate, where it's not just that we had the Inflation Reduction Act passed, it was major climate legislation, but in But in the next few years, all of these auto manufacturing jobs and clean energy jobs happening in places like Northern Indiana, where I grew up, will either be destroyed by Donald Trump gutting that legislation, or those jobs will continue to grow by somebody serious about climate change.

That's what's going to happen next. I do agree that on issue after issue, the past is a source of evidence on what will happen next. But the most important thing is what will happen in the future. Another big theme of the debate was Kamala Harris talking about the future and representing even a generational contrast with Donald Trump talking about the past.

She was asked, would you have done something differently than how President Biden did? I mean, for example, he did not sign the executive orders curbing asylum and taking these tougher actions on the border. Until in the last few months. Some people may look at that and say, well, she was there the last three and a half years. Should there have been more action sooner?

Those executive orders were a response to Congress failing, although Congress tried, because Donald Trump went in intervened and prevented any progress from being made. But again, the point is what's going to happen next. She's been clear what she will do next. We're also pretty clear. By the way, you know who wasn't clear on what they're going to do next as President? Whenever the going got tough was Donald Trump. He was given the opportunity to say whether he wanted Ukraine to defeat Russia, and he wouldn't say it. He wouldn't say that he wanted Ukraine to win. He was given the opportunity to say if he would veto a national abortion ban, and he didn't say that he would veto it, which to me is a pretty strong indication that he would sign it.

Yeah. Pete Buttet, Judge, thank you so much for your time tonight, for being here.Thank you.Thank.