Did Trump condemn the killing of Peanut the squirrel?

Did Donald Trump, the former and next President of the United States, condemn the killing of an internet-famous squirrel from Upstate New York?

The answer is complicated.

Peanut, a famous squirrel with hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram, and Fred the raccoon were seized from a home in the Southern Tier by the state Department of Environmental Conservation last week. The beloved pets were then euthanized so they could be tested for rabies, the DEC said.

In New York, it is illegal to care for wild animals without a special permit. Peanut and Fred’s owner Mark Longo told the Associated Press he worked to get his squirrel certified as a learning animal before it was seized by the DEC.

The decision to end the animals’ lives sparked outrage across the country. There have even been bomb threats against DEC offices from Bath to New Paltz.

The death of Peanut, who also called himself “P’Nut,” also turned into a rallying cry for Republicans just days before Election Day. JD Vance, now the vice president-elect, commented on the squirrel’s demise just days before voters went to the polls.

“So I know Don is excited about Peanut the squirrel,” Vance said Sunday during a rally in North Carolina, video released by the BBC shows.

According to Vance, Trump asked if Democrats had “murdered the Elon Musk of squirrels.”

“Have you seen the videos of that squirrel? “He’s kind of a genius, or at least he was, unfortunately,” Vance said. “But the same government that doesn’t care about hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals coming into our country doesn’t want us to have pets. It’s the craziest, craziest thing.”

But did Trump himself take the time to denounce the DEC for taking down Peanut and Fred?

Reuters has determined that a statement purporting to be from Trump and posted on social media was fake.

The statement, topped by the Trump campaign logo (and accompanied by an AI-generated image of Trump carrying a peanut with angel wings on his shoulder), claimed the squirrel survived — and a hotel room and a gift worth of $500 card – if he told the DEC he was from Mexico.

Trump officials told multiple publications, including the New York Post and TMZ, that the statement was fake.

But while Trump has yet to make any public statements about Peanut’s death, his campaign has been embroiled in the controversy.

The day before Election Day, Team Trump — the Trump campaign’s official TikTok account — shared three photos of Peanut with its 6.1 million followers.

One showed Peanut sitting in a baseball cap and was captioned: “Utterly unnecessarily murdered by Democratic bureaucrats in New York.”

Another showed a ghostly image of the squirrel with its paws on Trump’s shoulders. The illustration included a battle cry:

“We will avenge you at the ballot box on Tuesday.”