Former Trump Staffer Follows Up Battery Conviction With Alleged Dog-Kicking

Is the GOP the party of animal cruelty, specifically against man’s best friend? Without knowing the facts, many people would probably guess yes—though as it turns out, the facts also support this conclusion!

On Tuesday, Politico reported that Brandon Phillips, a longtime Republican operative based in Georgia who has been hired as chief of staff for incoming Representative Mike Collins, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty in November for allegedly kicking a dog. According to the arrest warrant affidavit, the dog belongs to a woman named Tifani Eledge, and the alleged kick caused “a cut to the dog’s stomach.” (Phillips and Collins did not respond to Politico’s requests for comment.) Phillips previously served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign director in Georgia, until he resigned following reports from various news outlets that he pleaded guilty in 2008 to criminal trespassing and battery, for which he was sentenced to three years of probation, several dozen hours of community service, and a fine of $1,567 fine. (His probation was ultimately reduced.)

Phillips joins a long line of Republicans with a history of allegedly not being very nice to canines, one of whom used to be his boss. In 2007, the world learned that presidential hopeful Mitt Romney—for whom Phillips served as Georgia state director during the 2008 primary—once strapped his Irish setter, Seamus, to the roof of the family station wagon for a 12-hour drive. (While Romney—who fully copped to the incident—had only planned to make predetermined stops along the way, that plan was disturbed when a Seamus suffered a bout of what we can only assume was terror-induced diarrhea.)

Of course, that Seamus episode—which may or may not have cost Romney the vote of dog lovers, and thus the election—pales in comparison to the report that emerged in October that then Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz was was allegedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of dogs and an “entire litter of puppies.” As a reminder, that report, from Jezebel, revealed that, according to a review of 75 studies published by Oz between 1989 and 2010, his research experiments killed at least 329 canines and inflicted “significant suffering on them and the other animals used in experiments.” (Pigs, rabbits, and rodents were also reportedly harmed.) In May 2004, Columbia University, Oz’s employer at the time, was ordered to pay a $2,000 penalty for violating the Animal Welfare Act. Later, the university defended Oz as “a highly respected researcher and clinician” but did not deny any of the allegations of animal cruelty. (In a statement to Patriot-News, Oz campaign spokesperson Brittany Yanick called the Jezebel story “totally false and preposterous” and insisted “Doctor Oz never abused any animals, and suggesting otherwise is ridiculous.” During the fact-checking process for an article about the US Senate race in Pennsylvania, Oz’s campaign, per the publication, “did not deny the allegations about the puppies.”)

Oz ultimately lost the Senate race to John Fetterman, whose own pup appears to be treated like prince.

Meanwhile, though there are no documented incidents of Donald Trump physically harming dogs, he famously dislikes the animal. “Donald was not a dog fan,” Ivana Trump wrote in her memoir, Raising Trump, noting that he hated her dog Chappy (and that the feeling was mutual). He also spent much of his tenure in Washington denigrating ex-employees and other perceived foes by comparing them to dogs, tweeting that his enemies “choked like a dog,” been “dumped like a dog,” been “fired like a dog,” and “kicked out of the ABC News debate like a dog.”