The New Yorker:

In an election season dominated by dead dogs, childless cat ladies, pets for dinner, and dumped bear cubs, the ferret lobby has some advice.

By Zach Helfand

It’s a strange relief that this Presidential election is the first in American history without a pet owner as a major-party candidate. Every week, it seems, comes a disturbing animal story: childless cat ladies, Biden’s biting dog, the eating-the-cats-and-the-dogs hoax. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., endured two animal-related scandals—his dumping of a dead bear cub in Central Park and his chainsaw mutilation of a whale carcass, whose decapitated head he strapped atop his minivan. (“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car,” his daughter Kathleen recalled.) And this was the animal-rights candidate. Kristi Noem, formerly Trump’s Vice-Presidential front-runner, wrote proudly about shooting her troublemaking dog Cricket. The Guardian recently reported that the Project 2025 architect, Kevin Roberts, had bragged to colleagues about bludgeoning a neighbor’s dog to death with a shovel. (Roberts denied the incident.)

Given these allies, it’s not surprising that Trump isn’t an animal guy, though the language of the “Access Hollywood” tape—“moved on her like a bitch,” “grab them by the pussy”—could suggest a latent fixation with dogs and cats. Trump has described antagonists sweating like a dog, choking like a dog, getting fired like a dog, getting thrown off ABC like a dog, getting thrown off “The View” like a dog, begging for money like a dog, lying like a dog, dying like a dog, and getting dumped like a dog. “Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart,” he once advised. “She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again—just watch.”

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