Trump Supporters are Pinning Their Hopes on a Dead Squirrel

You can't make this stuff up!

Tomorrow is Election Day and there has been a lot of talk on social media about how Kamala Harris has jumped ahead of Donald Trump in some states based on exit polls at early voting poll locations. So, as a last minute attempt to sway voters into voting for Trump, some of Trump's most loyal supporters are pinning their hopes for a Trump victory on a dead squirrel.

That's right, a dead squirrel.

His name was Peanut and he was an orphaned squirrel who was adopted by a man named Mark Longo who lives in the rural New York town of Pine City (located near the Pennsylvania border). He also runs an animal wildlife sanctuary. Longo said he took the squirrel home with him during a visit to New York City when Peanut's mother was hit by a car.

Longo began to post photos and videos of Peanut on Instagram, TikTok, and other social media platforms where Peanut became an Internet sensation.

It all came crashing down this past weekend when there were anonymous complaints and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) seized Peanut and a raccoon who also lived at the sanctuary named Fred. In the process of confiscating the animals, one of the DEC employees was bitten, which prompted a test for rabies. As part of the rabies testing process both animals were killed. A social media firestorm emerged after Longo announced the deaths of Peanut and Fred.

This, in turn, provided an opportunity for Donald Trump supporters to seize on this story to use it as an example of too much government regulations and to somehow pin this on Kamala Harris even though this incident was a New York state matter, not the federal government's. As an added bonus to all this is that it happened in New York, a solid blue state that is highly unlikely to elect New York City native Donald Trump for a third time in a row because they can't stand him. Had this incident happened in a red state like Texas or Mississippi, this would have never come up as an issue being championed by the Make America Great Again movement because they would've said something like “states rights” or “let the states handle it.”

Since it happened in New York, there were Trump supporters like this person who tweeted directly at Harris “Your Administration killed Peanut the squirrel.”

They started putting up tributes to Peanut while using AI generated graphics and videos, such as this one featuring an army of marching squirrels wearing red hats that said “Pets 4 Trump.”

Republican Senator Mike Lee had proposed replacing elephant logo that has long represented the Republican Party with a squirrel in honor of the late Peanut. He tweeted “ The elephant is cool, but elephants don't live in America. Squirrels do! Let's immortalize Peanut the Squirrel. Let's make him the official mascot of the GOP.”

Donald Trump Jr. took on the cause of Peanut's untimely death when he tweeted “I can't believe Democrats in New York killed the Elon Musk of squirrels!!!”

This is the same Donald Trump Jr. who has gone on African safaris with his brother Eric and killed animals for sport. Not for food. Not for self-defense. They killed animals for the fun of it, just like what they did to an unfortunate leopard whose dead body they held up in triumph.

Elon Musk has even taken up the cause of Peanut's demise by issuing several tweets like this one about Peanut where he wrote “Government overreach kidnapped an orphan squirrel and executed him…”

Musk also tweeted “It is NOT ok for the government to barge into your home and kill your pets! What has become of the Land of the Free?”

Musk even tweeted “Vote. For PNut! For Liberty! For Freedom!”

As this tweet from Joshua P. Hill puts it, “Elon Musk has sent 30 tweets so far today, and half of them are about the government killing pet squirrels. Fascinating to see the world's richest man be so openly and rabidly fascist it breaks his brain.”

Fascinating indeed! Instead of doing things like discussing actual policies that Donald Trump would implement if he gets reelected tomorrow, his supporters are instead grasping at straws like Peanut the dead pet squirrel in the hopes that Trump can get more votes, especially in the crucial battleground states. That says it all about how dysfunctional the Trump campaign has become, especially with Donald Trump showing signs of cognitive decline. They can't make the case for Donald Trump based on policy issues so they resort to cheap publicity stunts like latching on to a dead squirrel that they can somehow pin on Kamala Harris (even though that one is a New York state matter) in the declining days of the 2024 election.

I wouldn't be surprised if Trump's allies in the Kremlin start to run with the late Peanut story by having its troll farms post about how terrible that Kamala Harris had killed that squirrel herself with her own bare hands.

Let's take a closer look at whether the DEC was justified in killing Peanut. According to this article in USA Today:

It's not legal to keep wildlife as pets in many parts of the country, but people licensed as wildlife rehabilitators can legally care for them in New York as long as they plan to release them back into the wild once they are well. It's not clear whether Longo had gone through or begun the process of becoming a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, but he had also established a nonprofit called P'Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary.

At the time that he adopted Peanut Mark Longo didn't have a wildlife rehabilitator license but he claimed that he was in the process of filling out the paperwork when Peanut was killed. Yet he founded the P'Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary before he even got around to doing the paperwork.

Look I'm not totally unsympathetic to what Mark Longo had gone through. I once owned an unconventional pet myself. Back in the early days of 2012 I was still reeling from my hip surgery in September followed by my husband suddenly deciding to leave home just three months after my surgery and three days after Christmas Day 2011. He refused to speak with me and he literally disappeared. Basically he felt entitled to act this way because he felt that he was too special to speak to his own wife on a difficult matter like a normal grown adult would. (He would say “Everyone has a different breakup story” to justify his atrocious behavior.) He felt that he was too special to follow conventional norms because he got into Oberlin College as a legacy student (both his parents were alumni), then got a job as a software engineer at NASA, and he was also the grandson of the famous Hungarian diabetes researcher Michael Somogyi. He demanded a divorce and he wanted it as soon as he was legally allowed to get it. He acted like a totally spoiled bratty child through the whole thing. (He would whine about how he had to do so much work to separate everything we had jointly owned together when he was the one who was so eager for a divorce. He even turned down my offer for the two of us to undergo marriage counseling.) For added measure he sent a divorce petition via email as a .pdf attachment on Christmas Eve 2012.

So I was totally lost by January 2012 and I did a lot of aimless driving. By the end of that month I learned that he had left me for a friend of ours who had openly spoken about her long history of serious mental health issues. One day, in the midst of this craziness, I purchased a pet hedgehog from a pet store (which has since gone out of business) because they had a display of hedgehogs and they looked so cute. I purchased the entire package, which included a cage, litter, toys, food, and a book on how to take care of a hedgehog. I named him Spike and he lived with me for the next year and a half while taking lots of photos like this one.

Despite his cute appearance, Spike wasn't the friendliest pet in the world. He didn't like to be touched and he would angrily hiss at me each day whenever I changed his food and water. Cage cleaning became a weekly struggle because he hated it so much that he would turn into a ball of spikes while angrily hissing and shaking. And those spikes were so sharp that I had to use a small pet scooper to move him around while I cleaned his cage. But compared to what I was going through with my husband at the time, Spike was easy to deal with.

Hedgehogs are considered to be exotic animals by the US government so it was imperative for me to obey the law because one misstep could have caused Spike to suffer the same fate as Peanut. I obtained Spike legally from a store that was authorized by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to sell hedgehogs. I was only allowed to keep Spike as a pet without having to obtain any special licenses. If I had wanted to breed Spike, I would've had to apply for a special breeders license with the USDA before I could even introduce him to a female hedgehog. Additionally, I would've had to apply for another USDA license if I wanted to sell any hedgehog babies that Spike would have fathered with his theoretical mate. On top of that, even though I could legally own a hedgehog in Maryland, other states have a complete ban on owning one. If I had ever traveled with Spike to a state that didn't allow hedgehogs and I got caught doing so, the authorities would've confiscated Spike and he would have suffered the same fate as Peanut. So I kept him in Maryland during the entire time that Spike lived with me.

Basically I kept him as a pet and wrote about my adventures with Spike in my Sagittarius Dolly blog. One day in September, 2013 he went into the pink plastic igloo that he used as his personal bedroom like he usually did each day. Except he never emerged again. I lifted his pink igloo up and found him lying dead in his cage. The next thing I did was to grab a shovel and bury him in the backyard. I wrote one final post in my blog about the advantages and disadvantages of owning a pet hedgehog. I mourned my loss of Spike for a while then moved on with my life.

So getting back to Peanut the squirrel it turned out that not only did Mark Longo kept a pet squirrel and started an animal sanctuary before he filled out the necessary paperwork but there was an extracurricular activity that Longo had also engaged in that would shock and horrify many of Trump's supporters, especially among his evangelical followers. Mark Longo has an OnlyFans page where he is known as Squirrel Daddy.

It's a pretty funny development even though that OnlyFans page had nothing to do with Peanut's death. I am seriously hoping that this attempt to tie Peanut's death with Kamala Harris backfires and it doesn't affect her at all in tomorrow's election. Because it shouldn't affect her—she had nothing to do with it. This is strictly a New York state issue that should be dealt with on the state and local level.

By making a major issue of what happened to Peanut, MAGA has once again exposed themselves as clowns. Keep up with the clowning, MAGA Trumpers, and Kamala Harris will be guaranteed to win tomorrow. 🤡

My Substack is free to subscribe but if you want to make a comment, you’ll need to take out a paid subscription. Click on the button below for more details.