Learning the Lessons of New York’s Great P’Nut Raid — and the Backlash
Public opinion is key to the success of any deportation program
By Andrew R. Arthur on November 5, 2024
In our wildly bunkered and polarized media environment, you are either intimately familiar with the sad demise of a media star named P’Nut the squirrel or may think I’ve suffered a rapid-onset neurological decline and am typing out random words. But there are important PR lessons in the subsequent social-media backlash triggered by the tale that bear consideration should former President Donald Trump prevail on Tuesday and implement his deportation plans.
P’Nut and Fred. All of this began in 2017, when Pine City, N.Y., resident Mark Longo rescued P’Nut (aka: Peanut, aka: PNUT) after seeing the squirrel’s mother “get run over by a car”.
According to Longo, he initially had no intention of keeping P’Nut but couldn’t find an animal rescue to care for him, so he bottle-fed the squirrel for eight months before releasing him into the wild.
That plan didn’t go so well. As Longo told USA Today in July 2022:
I released him in the backyard, and a day and a half later, I found him sitting on my porch, missing half his tail. So here I am, balling my eyes out, like I failed you as your human. ... And I kind of opened the door, he ran inside, and that was the last of Peanut's wildlife career.
The squirrel joined a household that included Longo, his wife, and Chloe the cat, and P’Nut quickly developed quite the social media presence, with an Instagram account that currently has 694,000 followers (up from 534,000 on Saturday) and millions of TikTok views.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Learning-Lessons-New-Yorks-Great-PNut-Raid-and-Backlash
