Trump got back on track with the border. Then he started talking about the dogs (and geese).

For a moment, it seemed like Donald Trump was using his Tucson, Arizona, rally to return to his typical immigration programming after a shaky debate performance. Then he went there — again.

Trump repeated the baseless claim that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio — remarks that became the stuff of endless social media memes soon after his debate.

“A recording of 911 calls show that residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the town’s geese. They’re taking the geese. You know where the geese are? In the park, in the lake. And even walking off with their pets. ‘My dog’s been taken. My dog’s been stolen,” Trump said Thursday night in Arizona.

The former president spent much of his campaign stop in the border state warning about an influx of migrants and the threats he says immigration poses to the country. He said he won in 2016 because of his message about the border — and that he knows it’s one of his top issues this year. He encouraged GOP candidates running in Arizona to talk about little else besides the border.

But after two days of unflattering headlines and Republicans squabbling over him pushing an anti-immigrant conspiracy theory, Trump once again couldn’t resist veering off into the outrageous.

Thursday marked Trump’s first rally since his Tuesday debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, during which he strayed from his usual talking points on an issue that has long been seen as a political sweet spot for the Republican, made all the more relevant by voters’ heightened concerns around border security. But instead of capturing headlines for his dominance on one of his more politically favorable subjects, the former president again elevated the false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio.

And instead of reversing course, Trump is further attaching himself to the pet hoax. On Thursday, he posted five digitally doctored photos on Truth Social depicting cats supporting or being rescued by Trump — including a cat at a Trump rally holding a sign that read “Kamala hates me.”

Now, some Republicans say Trump’s embrace of a social media conspiracy about migrants is an example of how he could aid Harris on one of her greatest political vulnerabilities, while potentially turning off undecided voters he could capture with a consistent, steady message on immigration and crime. Prior to his pushing of the pet-eating hoax, Trump had begun to regularly mention the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter as he discussed immigration at his rallies.

Trump, said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona, “has an uncanny ability to take a popular issue that he can really score points on, and turn it into wild conspiracy theories that make voters scratch their head.”

“He just can’t help himself by veering into conspiracy theory territory,” Marson said, “when he actually has some really good examples that could scare people and make people question Harris’ commitment to a secure border.”

For some Democrats, Trump’s fixation on pets in Ohio this week has come as a relief. First, it allowed Harris to walk away mostly unscathed from Tuesday’s debate on an issue that has long vexed the Biden administration — and a topic Harris prepared for heavily during debate prep. Instead, she was able to hit Trump for his role in killing the bipartisan border deal, while mostly avoiding having to play defense on immigration. On Thursday, he raised it again, even as he appeared in a battleground border state.

“He just became so discombobulated from the get go that it wasn’t the challenge that I think we were all expecting it was going to be,” said Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, speaking of the debate.

And “instead of being concise and direct on his strongest issue,” said Mike Madrid, a political consultant with expertise on Latino voting trends, who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, Trump is muddling the issue by “playing into this delusional area of a policy that he actually has a decided advantage on.”

In an acknowledgment of how challenging the issue remains for Democrats, Harris has been more aggressive on the border since the launch of her campaign, highlighting Trump’s role in the collapse of the border security bill, while also attacking some of the more controversial policies he supported as president, including family separation. It’s part of her team’s effort to lure in undecided voters worried about the border and eager for policy solutions, even as voters trust Trump more to handle immigration.

“[Undecided voters] see one candidate in Harris who is talking about bipartisan solutions, and they see another candidate in Trump who is just rambling about racist, unproven conspiracy theories. That doesn’t look very presidential to an undecided voter,” said Matt Barreto, president of BSP Research, which conducts Latino polling for the Harris campaign.

Still, Harris did not discuss immigration on Thursday as she kicked off her post-debate swing with two rallies in North Carolina. Instead, she dinged the former president on the economy, abortion and Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s controversial blueprint for the next Republican administration that Trump has sought to distance himself from. She said the candidates “owe it to the voters to have another debate,” as her opponent declared there won’t be another face-off.

In the months since President Joe Biden’s clampdown on asylum, border crossing numbers are now lower than during Trump’s last month in office. This hasn’t fully broken through to voters, said Celinda Lake, who did polling for the Biden campaign. But it does help Democrats, she said, that the news isn’t filled with footage of an overwhelmed southern border, and that Republican governors aren’t busing migrants to Democrat-led cities. Instead, Trump is focusing the public on conspiracy theories.

While conservative media figures and some Republican elected officials have pushed blatant misinformation about Haitian migrants in Springfield stealing and eating local residents’ household pets, the city is, in many ways, facing a strain on resources due to an influx of immigrants.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine this week deployed state troopers to the city, where he said there has been a surge of traffic problems and “dangerous driving in Springfield by inexperienced Haitian drivers.” DeWine is also allocating $2.5 million in state funds to boost healthcare services in the city, while saying the “federal government has not demonstrated that they have any kind of plan to deal with the issue.” Local officials have welcomed the migrants, saying they are helping to revitalize the economy of what had been a shrinking city, while asking for help to pay for the strain on schools and other resources.

“There’s a place called Springfield, Ohio you’ve been reading about,” Trump said at his rally Thursday. “Twenty thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended upon the town of 58,000 people, destroying their entire way of life. This was a beautiful community, and now it’s horrible what’s happening.”

DeWine and local officials in Springfield have said there is no evidence, however, of Haitian migrants there eating dogs or cats — allegations that may have been conflated with the arrest of an Ohio-born woman in Canton after allegedly eating a cat, or a photo taken of an unidentified man in Columbus carrying a dead goose.

Instead of shouting about Haitians eating pets, Marson said Trump should stick to talking about things like the high-profile killings of innocent people by migrants in the country illegally — victims like Lakin Riley of Georgia and Rachel Morin of Maryland, whom Trump has repeatedly discussed.

“Besides there not being any evidence of this,” Marson said of the pet-eating claim, “it’s just weird and crazy to discuss. The normal people don’t want to talk about this.”

Some Republicans have continued to defend Trump and his running mate’s discussion of debunked claims, arguing that the actual details matter less than the overarching themes — including that some American cities are facing strain from illegal immigration.

“In broad terms, if you are talking about the immigration situation, if that is what people are talking about, then you are winning,” said Gregg Keller, a Republican strategist and former executive director of the American Conservative Union, speculating that some viewers at home Googled the city name when Trump mentioned there was a problem.

“There are now millions of Americans who are learning for the first time what’s going on in Springfield, Ohio,” Keller said.