Republicans spent Monday building a quickly debunked conspiracy about vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s dog – apparently because none of their attacks were getting through and they were becoming “desperate,” as MSNBC host Jen Psaki said later that day.
A columnist for the town hall newspaper, Missouri Attorney General Donald Trump Jr. wifethe founder of Turning Point USA, and others questioned the identity of Walz’s dog Scout based on a 2022 photo of Walz petting another dog, writing in a social media post, “I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a beautiful fall day than at the dog park. I know Scout enjoyed it.”
Any confusion was quickly cleared up when Walz posted an Instagram video – that same October day – featuring the dog in the picture along with Scout and several others.
Psaki noted the irony of the failed Republican attack, coming “from the party whose own rising star … Kristi Noem, talked about how she hated her own family dog so much that she took him to a gravel pit and shot him.” Noem, who had been considered one of Donald Trump’s most likely vice presidential candidates earlier this year, saw those hopes dashed after a scathing excerpt in her memoir about the killing of her dog drew bipartisan criticism.
“Good luck next time, guys,” Psaki said. “In the meantime, in situations like this, I would advise taking a leaf out of FDR’s book.”
Psaki noted how Roosevelt ridiculed Republicans’ attacks on his dog Fala during his fourth and final re-election campaign in 1944. Their claim that Roosevelt abandoned his dog in the Aleutian Islands and then sent a Navy warship to retrieve him was false.
“These Republican leaders have not contented themselves with attacks on me, my wife, or my sons. No, not content with that, now they are including my little dog, Fala,” Roosevelt said, prompting laughter. “I am accustomed to hearing vicious untruths about myself… But I think I have a right to resent – to object to – slanderous statements about my dog.”
Psaki concluded: “I think there’s actually an important lesson to be learned here. FDR was right: If you resort to attacking a candidate’s dog, you’re probably going to lose and you deserve all the ridicule that comes your way.”
