In the final hours of the presidential race, the leaders of the far right are “fired up” about one issue that’s sure to resonate with voters across the country: the death of Peanut the squirrel.
Peanut was a social media–famous rodent who was euthanized by New York state wildlife officials over the weekend during a test for rabies after the squirrel bit a person. State law prohibits keeping wild animals as pets, but that didn’t stop conservatives from latching onto the issue.
Peanut reemerged as a topic of concern at a rally in Georgia, where Republican Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Collins tied the squirrel’s death into an unfounded conspiracy that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets.
“Trump’s running against a socialistic, big-government, control-everything-about-you, woke regime,” Collins told the crowd. “This thing’s gotten so bad that they’re killing the pets, they’re killing the squirrels, they’re killing the raccoons.”
Greene took the lie a little further, claiming that “Democrats in New York City went in and raided a home to kill a squirrel.” Peanut was actually euthanized in Pine City, according to the report—not the Big Apple. And police did not raid Peanut’s owner’s home.
“They did—to kill a squirrel,” the 50-year-old insisted.
Republican vice presidential pick JD Vance also took the time to memorialize Peanut, claiming Monday in North Carolina that he had spoken to Donald Trump about the dead squirrel, with the Republican presidential nominee allegedly describing the bushy-tailed critter as the “Elon Musk of squirrels.”
Meanwhile, conservatives have spent years ardently advocating for the expansion of the death penalty. At a rally in Aurora, Colorado, last month, Trump escalated his own language on capital punishment, promising to make immigrants—whom he referred to as the “enemy from within” and “animals”—face harsher punishments for potential wrongdoing.
“Think of that!” he said. “We have to live with these animals. But we won’t live with them for long!”
To which someone in the crowd shouted back, “Kill them!”
