Argentine justice protects information on Milei’s dogs
1 hour ago1 hour ago
A court ruling ruled that information about the president’s English mastiffs is of a “private and family” nature.
After winning the most votes in Sunday’s primary, open, simultaneous and mandatory elections (PASO) in Argentina, candidate Javier Milei celebrated in a prestigious hotel in Buenos Aires and dedicated his victory, among others, to his five dogs. “And you can imagine who else… to my four-legged children: Conan, Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas”, he said.
The leader of the La Libertad Avanza party lives with five English mastiffs, weighing between 80 and 100 kilograms each. Milei recognizes in each of these dogs his real family, according to what he said during an interview in the TV program Infama recargado, of América TV channel. The first to come into his life was Conan, a dog he met in the Argentine province of Córdoba and named after Robert E. Howard’s literary series “Conan, the Barbarian”.
Javier Milei: We are the only ones who want a real change 2:43
According to Milei, Conan has a very particular character. He claims that his dog socializes with very few people. “To see, let’s say, how he reacts to a person, I make him listen to audios and, based on that, I know how he reacts or not,” said the economist in an interview in 2019 in the program ‘Infama recargado’, of América TV channel. He also said that the dog and his sister are the only beings that have never betrayed him, and even acknowledged that he likes dogs more than people.
The family grew and the “grandchildren”, as he calls them, arrived, all named after famous economists: Murray, after Murray Rothbard; Milton, after Milton Friedman; Robert and Lucas, after Robert Lucas.
Milei’s combination of names is paradoxical. Of the three economists, only Rothbard identified himself with the libertarianism of the Austrian School, from which Milei claims to draw inspiration today. Both Friedman and Lucas belonged to the Chicago School, which, while sharing their neoclassical character, has a more modern approach to economic tools and accepts several ideas of Keynesianism, which libertarians repudiate.
As a matter of jealousy, “Papa Conan” and the five “brothers” never get together. Milei suffered a major bite from one of them a few years ago, when he was in the middle of a fight. “They fight over who, let’s say, is the favorite […], that exchange was generated, that, that is, for being in the middle, let’s say, my arm was in the middle, nothing else”, Milei tried to soften with his arm in a cast in the Argentine TV program ‘Implacables’.
The dogs live with Milei in a house with rooms adapted, says the presidential candidate, for their comfort.
Feeding them, he says, involves a 15 kg bag of balanced food every three days.
Milei assures that the dogs come first in his life: “When I lost my job and I had the money from the severance pay, I calculated how long it was going to take to get a job again and I said: ‘How can I get a job?
It would give me to, you know what, eat a pizza a day. And I had pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s why I weighed 120 kilos”, he told Ernesto Tenenbaum in a radio interview with Radio con vos.
Eccentric and multifaceted, the leader of the “libertarian liberal” discourse, as he identifies himself, formed a big canine gang at home. He says that Conan, his son, sleeps every night with him and his four grandchildren complete a family picture of high pedigree.
Javier Milei’s dog, Conan, was cloned as follows
The shocking video in which a killer whale hunts and eats a great white sharkThe shocking video in which a killer whale hunts and eats a great white…
How was the machete attack on a group of Argentines in Mexico? A family member’s testimonyHow was the machete attack on a group of Argentines in Mexico?…
An athlete tests in a funny video the famous “anti-sex” bed of the Paris 2024 Olympic GamesAn athlete tests in a funny video the famous “anti-sex” bed of the Paris 2024 Olympic…
The first thing a man unjustly sentenced to 400 years in prison and released after serving 34 years in a Florida prison didThe first thing a man unjustly sentenced to 400 years in prison and…
How many dogs did Milei get after cloning Conan? 11:23
Before becoming president of Argentina, Javier Milei cloned his English mastiff Conan in 2018 and obtained five puppies, the two specialized U.S. companies involved in the procedure told CNN.
Although the president’s spokespersons have not responded to CNN’s query about this version, the story of his cloned dogs is one of the most talked-about topics in the South American country. Between rumors and ambiguities, Milei’s dogs, baptized by their owner as “his four-legged children”, have become a topic of national interest.
But now there is confirmation of the procedure. And this is the story.
“We just started cloning dogs in 2016. We were relatively new at it and were trying to do it the best way. So, somehow, we went overboard and got five puppies. Luckily, Milei was happy,” recalls Codi Lamb, a customer representative for ViaGen Pets, the company that handled Conan’s cloning.
Milei has never confirmed or denied in public that the animals are cloned.
A literary origin
The dogs are named Conan, Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas.
The first is named after Robert E. Howard’s literary series “Conan the Barbarian”. The last four, named after economists admired by Milei: Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas.
The dogs are the product of a joint work between PerPETuate, the U.S. pet genetic preservation laboratory that was in charge of preserving Conan’s cells, and ViaGen Pets, the company that worked on the cloning process, as confirmed by these companies to CNN.
The extraction of cells for preservation and subsequent cloning requires the animal to be alive at the time of tissue collection. Milei contacted PerPETuate in 2014 and sent tissue from his dog, recalls Ron Gillespie, founder of the company. “Conan was alive at the time. And from what I recall, he lived for two more years after 2014, until he died. But during that time we kept the cells alive,” Gillespie details.
Extracting cells for preservation and subsequent cloning requires the animal to be alive at the time of tissue collection. Milei contacted PerPETuate in 2014 and sent tissue from his dog, recalls Ron Gillespie, founder of the company. “Conan was alive at the time. And from what I recall, he lived for two more years after 2014, until he died. But during that time we kept the cells alive,” Gillespie details.
Here’s Javier Milei’s daily routine with his five dogs 2:01
It was in 2017 – when, according to Gillespie, Conan had already died, something Milei has never publicly acknowledged – that the now president decided to move forward with cloning. At that time, the founder of PerPETuate contacted ViaGen Pets, a U.S. company that clones pets. There began the process that would lead to the five English mastiffs.
After two months of pregnancy with a surrogate mother and two more in the care of ViaGen Pets, the dogs were finally sent to Argentina, which was quite a challenge due to their number and size. “At the end of the two months they already weighed several pounds, so Milei was in a situation where she couldn’t carry all five puppies on a plane. That was one of the biggest challenges he had in getting them to Buenos Aires,” Gillespie recalls.
From one Conan to another: genetically identical copies.
“They’re genetically the same, like twin brothers,” ViaGen Pets’ Lamb says of the five clones.
Milei named one of the puppies Conan because he acted the same way as the original mastiff, Gillespie recalls. “He (Milei) would call him, ‘Conan, Conan,’ and this dog would respond to that call. He also had a certain behavior. He liked to watch TV just like the other Conan, whereas the other dogs didn’t.”
A source close to Milei at the time told CNN that Conan passed away in 2017 and that one of the cloned mastiffs was later christened with the same name by the mandarin.
It was the same year of the cloning, 2018, when the now president presented his dogs in society in a program of the Argentine network América TV. He brought all of them, except Conan, and referred to the four present as “his grandchildren”, Conan’s children. He excused himself for not presenting him on the program because the dog “only socializes with a few people”.
What was not clear then was which Conan he was referring to: whether the dog from which they extracted tissue and cells that later allowed the cloning – the one that a source close to CNN acknowledges died in 2017 – or the cloned Conan, born at the same time as the other four who were on the TV set.
In fact, in the interview Milei gave a month ago to CNN, journalist Andrés Oppenheimer mentioned that the president had four dogs. Milei immediately corrected him: “There are five”.
Ron Gillespie, who says he has contact with the head of state at least once a year to find out how the dogs are doing and whether he wants to continue to keep Conan’s cells, says that until the last time they spoke, before Argentina’s general election, all five English mastiffs were alive.
Conan’s cells are stored in a freezer in Massachusetts, USA, according to Gillespie. They are available to the president so that he can clone his dog as many times as he wants.
An Argentine court ruling set limits on requests for access to public information on the “private life” of President Javier Milei, including any data concerning his dogs, local press reported on Thursday (25.07.2024).
This was ruled by the Procuración del Tesoro de la Nación in response to a request for public information regarding the expenses for the upkeep of the dogs, whom the president considers part of his family and calls his “four-legged children.”
The dogs, four English mastiffs that Milei had cloned from one that died years ago, live in individual kennels at the presidential residence in Olivos, on the northern outskirts of the capital.
The president’s own spokesman, Manuel Adorni, refused on several occasions to answer questions from the press regarding Milei’s dogs, considering it “part of his privacy”.
According to the newspaper Página12, after repeated requests for data on the animals under the Law on Right of Access to Public Information, the Attorney General’s Office responded that such data is “of a private and family nature” and “has no public relevance”.
Use of public funds in kennels denied
The requests for information, as detailed by the agency, required data on the number of dogs, breed, care and maintenance expenses and the origin of the funds used to pay for the works for their housing in the presidential residence.
He clarified, however, that the expenses for the care of the presidential dogs “were not paid with funds from the National Treasury”.
Everything about the president’s dogs is a sensitive issue for the Presidency, especially how many there are and whether the president really considers his first dog, “Conan”, who died in 2017, from which he cloned the others, to be alive.
In March, during an interview with CNN, Milei noted that his daily routine begins by greeting his dogs.
“I go to see my little four-legged children, it’s my way of relaxing,” he said. He added: “There are five of them – Conan, Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas (…) there are five kennels.”
“If the president says there are five dogs, there are five dogs,” spokesman Adorni later affirmed in response to a journalist.
