Donald Trump took the bait and choked on the dog

I named my dog Buddy, my second childhood dog. He was a bit younger than Pal, whom I also named.

Hey, I was a kid.

We kept them in a gated pen out back. This was long before dogs were allowed to live among us. Inside our homes. In our beds, for goodness sakes.

Nah, back in the day, dogs had their place, and it wasn’t in the house. It was not up for debate.

We’re 50-odd days from selecting the next president of the United States. From going to the polls and penciling an “X” next to the name of either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump.

Most of us have long since made up our minds. For our own reasons, we’ve dug into our respective corners and hunkered in for the final slog.

For the not-yet-decided, Tuesday night’s debate, the first between these two candidates, was billed to be a watershed. An opportunity to choose. A chance to see just who they were, what they believed, and how they planned to lead us.

Sure, we wanted to know how they planned to stem inflation, stifle border chaos, and bring about world peace. How they would address climate change, the proliferation of guns, small businesses, the housing shortage, and child care (wait, was that even mentioned?).

But what we really wanted to see, doggonit, was how they would lead.

Specifically, how Harris would lead since she was the only candidate on the stage who’d never inhabited the Oval Office.

What we saw, over 105 contentious minutes, was a prosecutor who tamed the bark out of a felon. We saw a trained and skilled debater who poked at Trump’s triggers, incited his insecurities and repeatedly exposed his empty concepts.

Each time, Trump took the bait. And choked. On the dog.

I’m referring, of course, to the most horrifically loathsome lie Trump stated on a night when he presumably took the stage to show us that he was more than whom we know him to be. More than a narcissist. More than a bully. More than someone who belittles the new neighbors who don’t look like him.

More than someone who treats the truth like rancid milk.

More than everything our parents (at least most of ours) taught us not to be.

More than we want our children to be.

Instead, he showed us worse.

Instead, he brought onto the stage in Philadelphia, into a presidential debate, debunked, third-party, Facebook foolishness about people. About proud people. About people — men, women and children — who immigrated to this nation seeking the same promise and opportunity Trump’s ancestors sought when they came to these shores (inhabited by the Indigenous people).

About Haitians.

“In Springfield, Ohio, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”

ABC’s David Muir intervened, saying the network had reached out to the Springfield city manager, who said there were “no credible reports of pets harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

Trump barked again. “I’ve seen people on television, people on television saying my dog was taken and used for food. …. The people on television say their dog was eaten by the people who went there.”

Trump to America: I see people on television. Woof.

Trump isn’t rogue, either. Sen. JD Vance, his road-dog running mate, gave this hateful lie life just a few hours earlier with a post on X that was also quickly squashed by the truth.

What’s most troubling is that this vile doggerel is infecting others in places where Haitians have quietly settled in recent years.

Trump, Vance, and those who feed their lies are infecting people whose insipid attacks sound eerily like those levied at my parents and grandparents by their parents and grandparents.

Last month, at a community meeting in Albertville, Ohio, convened to diffuse the baseless rhetoric emerging in the city over its growing Haitian community, one person, as reported by my colleague William Thornton, stood and said Haitians have smells to them. “They’re not like us. They’re not here to be Americanized. They don’t care about schools. They’re scary, folks.”

Who’s truly the scary one here?

He was on a stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, barking like a scared dog.

Roy Johnson is a columnist for al.com.