REAL AMERICANS USE KETCHUP
Trump: “Chicagoans Are Eating Dogs!”
“And they’re putting Communist condiments on them!”
In an effort to attract new supporters in Michigan, Donald Trump has recycled an old scare tactic. The first time he used it, he claimed Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. Now he’s painted a more frightening picture: Chicago retirees in Michigan are eating people’s dogs. “They boil the dogs,” howled Trump at a recent rally, “then shove ’em into a poppy-seed bun. They cover them with disgusting condiments. Then they chow down on those adorable hounds, and wash ’em down with Old Style® beer!”
As usual, Trump was stoking people’s fears of immigrants to gain their votes. Normally, Trump resorts to racism. But this time, he targeted migrants who’d jacked up the cost of living for his audience. Those were people who’d been born and bred on Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula.
The Leelanau is situated in the northwest corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, bracketed by Lake Michigan to the west and Grand Traverse Bay to the east. It’s renowned for its rolling pastoral countryside, quaint port villages, cherry orchards and vineyards, and a hundred miles of scenic shoreline.
That said, the Leelanau has a notable downside: the highest median cost of housing — $409,500 — in the State of Michigan.¹ Granted, the affluent owners of those homes have injected sizable sums of cash into the economy of what was once a hardscrabble region. But they’ve also bid up the property values to the point that many people who work on the peninsula can’t afford to live there. The average elementary school teacher, for example, earns $61,650 per year, but would have to shell out $59,532 to cover the mortgage payment for a modest two-bedroom home. The typical firehouse EMT earns $35,720 per year, but your basic apartment would blow a $29,400 hole in that salary.²
Who’s to blame for this state of affairs, in the opinion of Leelanau natives? Immigrants from Chicagoland.
Chicagoans first encounter the peninsula because it’s a convenient weekend getaway. The Leelanau is an hour-and-twenty-minute flight from Chicago, a five-hour drive, or a day’s sail by yacht. Its scenic beauty is superior to that of other nearby locales — Illinois’s Apple River Canyon, the Wisconsin Dells, the Indiana Dunes, and Saugatuck, Michigan. Consequently, Chicagoans overrun the Leelanau during the Summer and the Fall color season.
That suits the locals just fine. True, the Chicagoans are like seagulls at a picnic: they drop in, eat the food, crap all over everything, then fly away. But they leave behind a sizable share of the ~$1.4 billion tourists annually pump into the Traverse Bay region.³
The problem with the Chicagoans is that some of them retire to the Leelanau.
One result is a culture clash between the natives and newcomers.
To begin with, the Chicagoans’ eating habits are appalling. They push Leelanau restaurants to offer Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. That’s just “tomato soup in a bread bowl,” according to food critic Jon Stewart. “I don’t know whether to eat it or throw a coin in it and make a wish.”⁴
The Chicagoans scorn Leelanau customs. For instance, when one encounters a Black Bear⁵ while hiking through the woods, the appropriate thing to do is about-face and beat a hasty retreat. Chicagoans get in the bear’s face and ask if it poops in the woods or if that’s an urban legend. They don’t realize the bear may take umbrage and bite their head off. Which, admittedly, is understandable. Unlike the Leelanau’s bears, the Chicago Bears are pushovers.
The Chicagoans’ accents make them hard to understand. They:
- “Axe” what’s on draft at a bar;
- Bitch at bartenders because “yous don’ carry no Schlitz”;
- Then peel out of the parking lot, yelling “Get out of the way jagoff” at the pedestrians they barely miss.
Oh, and when a Sheriff’s deputy pulls them over for reckless driving, they always offer the excuse “I’m on a mission from God.”
What riles Leelanau natives most of all, however, is that Chicagoans make it too expensive for people raised on the Leelanau to buy a house on the Leelanau. Never mind the 7,000 square foot, five-bedroom, five-bath “cottages” which go for $4.5 million.⁶ A humble 1,400 square foot, three-bedroom, two-bath house goes for $420,000.⁷ Want more affordable workforce housing? Your best option may be a 600 square foot, one-bedroom, one-bath house listed for $198,500.⁸
Consequently, people cheered when Trump vilified immigrants from Chicago during a rally at the Suttons Bay Marina.
“They’re eating people’s dogs,”⁹ fumed Trump. “And how they do it is disgusting. First they boil them. Then they put ’em in a bun and cover them with sweet pickle relish, finely-chopped white onions, tomato wedges, sport peppers, a dill pickle spear, and a dash of sea salt. But Chicagoans never use ketchup. Only mustard. It’s taboo in their culture to put ketchup on a dog.¹⁰
“Face it,” continued Trump. “Chicago is using the Leelanau as a dumping ground,” “They’re not sending their best people.¹¹ They’re sending radicals, thugs, and socialists. Retired gynecologists, database administrators, and orthodontists. Some are good people: the slumlords and payday lenders. But mainly you’re getting airline pilots, cardiologists, university professors, orthopedic surgeons, and system architects. If people like that keep coming, the Leelanau will become a filthy crime-ridden Communist hellscape.”¹²
“The first thing I’ll do is send the Chicagoans back to the shithole¹³ suburbs they came from.¹⁴
- Kenilworth [median household income $250,000];
- Winnetka [$250,000];
- Kildeer [$226,375];
- Hinsdale [$224,185]; and
- Hawthorn Woods [$213,6055].”¹⁵
“I’ll send squads of ICE¹⁶, border patrol and federal enforcement officers to the Leelanau. They’ll hunt down, arrest, and deport every retired radiologist, dermatologist, investment banker, and patent attorney until not a single Chicagoan is left on the peninsula.¹⁷
“Then,” crowed Trump, “I’ll secure the Leelanau’s southern border by building a wall to keep the Chicagoans out. It’ll cross the peninsula’s twenty-four mile base from Empire to Traverse City. Trust me, I’ve done this before. I built a forty-seven mile wall¹⁸ on America’s border with Mexico at a cost of $46 million per mile.¹⁹ The Leelanau’s wall will be only half as long, and I’ll build it for just twice as much. It’ll be a thirty-foot steel bollard wall.²⁰ It’ll be the most beautiful wall you’ve ever seen. And like that other wall I built, Mexico will pay for it.¹⁸
[1]: “5 Michigan Counties Where Home Prices Exceed $350K”, The River, https://rivergrandrapids.com/michigan-top-median-home-prices-2023/
[2]: “Is Leelanau Making Progress On Its Housing Problem?”, The Ticker, https://www.leelanauticker.com/news/is-leelanau-making-progress-on-its-housing-problem/
[3]: “New Report Charting Local Tourism’s Economic Impact In 2022”, The Ticker, https://www.traverseticker.com/news/new-report-charting-local-tourisms-economic-impact-in-2022/
[4]: “Watch Jon Stewart’s Epic Rant Against Chicago Pizza”, Eater, https://www.eater.com/2013/11/14/6330695/watch-jon-stewarts-epic-rant-against-chicago-pizza
[5]: “Michigan Black Bear Facts”, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, https://web.archive.org/web/20150411044556/http://michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10369-105034--,00.html
[6]: “11772 S Watch Hill Dr, Empire, MI 49630”, Zillow, https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/11772-S-Watch-Hill-Dr-Empire-MI-49630/2067893890_zpid/
[7]: “4801 S Manor Dr, Cedar, MI 49621”, Zillow, https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4801-S-Manor-Dr-Cedar-MI-49621/106436190_zpid/
[8]: “320 S Shabwasung St, Northport, MI 49670”, Zillow, https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/320-S-Shabwasung-St-Northport-MI-49670/106438135_zpid/
[9]: “A very old political trope’: the racist US history behind Trump’s Haitian pet eater claim”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/14/racist-history-trump-pet-eating-immigrant
[10]: “Why don’t Chicagoans put ketchup on their hot dogs?”, WTTW, https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-mysteries/mystery/why-dont-chicagoans-put-ketchup-on-their-hot-dogs
[11]: “Donald Trump refers to immigrants as “rapists” in presidential campaign launch”, Salon, https://www.salon.com/2015/06/16/donald_trump_refers_to_immigrants_as_rapists_in_presidential_campaign_launch/
[12]: “Trump Speaks at CPAC 2023 Transcript”, Rev, https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/trump-speaks-at-cpac-2023-transcript
[13]: “Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as ‘shithole’ countries”, NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946
[14]: “Trump demonizes migrants in dark, misleading speech”, Killeen Daily Herald, https://kdhnews.com/news/nation/trump-demonizes-migrants-in-dark-misleading-speech/article_f854ef0c-db24-570a-9398-fc3859221eea.html
[15]: “The 50 Richest Cities In Illinois, Per The Latest Census Data”, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2023/11/01/the-50-richest-cities-in-illinois-per-the-latest-census-data/
[16]: U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, https://www.ice.gov/
[17]: “Trump intensifies nativist message with sweeping proposal to deport immigrants”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/11/trump-aurora-colorado-migrant-crackdown
[18]: “Fact check: Mexico never paid for it. But what about Trump’s other border wall promises?”, NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-mexico-never-paid-it-what-about-trump-s-n1253983
[19]: “How Much of Trump’s Border Wall Was Built?”, U. S. News & World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-02-07/how-much-of-president-donald-trumps-border-wall-was-built
[20]: “Trump’s wall: How much has been built during his term?”, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46748492
