A Minnesota Sheriff has been forced to intervene so no one gets hurt or killed in yet another Trumper-driven conspiracy theory, sort of a rural Pizzagate. Social media sites picked up news that a dog named “Donald Trump” had been shot and killed and decided it was a political statement against the President, with suspicions focused on a neighbor who the folks on social media decided was a Democrat. There have apparently been multiple threats of violence on various social media sites against imagined perpetrators, even though a law enforcement investigation concluded that the dog was shot by someone “legally protecting their livestock” on private property. Here’s the story.

Late Update …

Pardon my inordinate interest in this story. But I’m home sick and fascinated by the way it amounts to a microcosm of much of Trumpism and the state of the country at large. This is from the AP story I flagged above …

The dog’s owner, 59-year-old Randal Thom of Lakefield, is an avid supporter of the president who has attended 46 of his rallies. Trump signed Thom’s photo of the dog at one of the rallies. The Alaskan Malamute was born in 2016, the same year Trump was elected, inspiring the name. Some social media users claimed a neighbor, who they believed to be a Democrat, intentionally killed Thom’s dog because of the namesake. Thom said he’s “heartbroken” over Donald Trump’s death but did not think politics motivated the dog’s shooting. “We have had some words back and forth about political stuff, whether he actually did it out of spite or not, I won’t subscribe to that totally,” Thom said of the neighbor he believes shot the dog. Thom found the dog late Sunday night after demonstrating at Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s presidential launch event in Minneapolis. Neighbors have lodged 14 complaints about Thom’s dogs running loose, killing animals and attacking a person, according to the sheriff. Thom was convicted on a petty misdemeanor of “dogs and cats at large” in 2015, according to Minnesota court records. Thom said he owns seven other dogs and installed fencing around his land last year to keep the dogs from leaving the property.

It’s notable and commendable that Thom isn’t himself blaming politics for the dog getting shot. But Thom’s been to 46 Trump rallies? How is that even possible? Think how many that is. Maybe he means pro-Trump rallies as opposed to ones where Trump actually appeared? You’ll note he found the dog when he came home from protesting Amy Klobuchar’s launch event.

But note the other part. Thom had eight dogs (not a crazy amount in a rural area) and fourteen separate complaints have been lodged against them and him for basically being a public nuisance, including attacking livestock and even a person. He was even convicted of a minor offense. I feel bad for the animals in question here. But I can’t help seeing this as a kind of microcosm of Trumpism. Thom has lots of dogs but seems to take no responsibility for their behavior or how they affect other people or their animals. Indeed, “Donald Trump” seems to have been attacking other people’s livestock when he was off protesting Amy Klobuchar. But he’s aggrieved that someone has taken steps – at least by the county sheriff’s account – to protect themselves from his rampaging animals. He even thinks it might be about politics, even though he thinks that’s probably not it. This whole story captures the Trumpist moment. Macrocosm is microcosm and vice versa.