Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention back in July painted a bleak picture of crime in America. Now, he’s attempting to parlay those talking points into his supposed outreach to Black and Latino voters. One major problem – they’re completely false.
Trump’s Tweets About Death And Violence
My colleague David Nelms wrote about Trump’s now somewhat infamous Tweet which seemed to celebrate the death of a Black woman in Chicago. Two days later, Trump spewed the following:
Look how bad it is getting! How much more crime, how many more shootings, will it take for African-Americans and Latinos to vote Trump=SAFE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2016
Is this really his idea of minority outreach??
Trump seems to think that America is a sick wasteland of crime that only HE can fix. The facts, however, don’t match his fantasy world (as usual).
FACT: Crime Levels Are On A Downward Trend
What Trump is doing is cherry-picking certain cities that have shown an increase in crime in certain years. For instance, as FactCheck points out:
“…Trump pointed to a New York Times story on an uptick in 2015 in the number of murders in several cities, including Dallas, as compared with 2014. The Times report showed a 17 percent increase in murders (an increase of 12 murders) in Dallas for January through August 2015 compared with the same time period for 2014.
Indeed, the Dallas Morning News later reported that the total for all of 2015 was a 17 percent increase over the previous year, but noted 2014’s number of murders (116) had been a “historic low” and the murder rate for 2015, according to city officials, was “the city’s fourth-lowest since Dallas police started counting in 1930.”
Just as they do with climate change, Republicans refuse to look at big picture statistics that show the truth. Instead, they pick and choose smaller-scale statistics to (falsely) prove their point. Facts are pesky things, indeed.
This isn’t Trump’s first brush with lies when it comes to crime statistics. There was also that time last year when he retweeted a neo-Nazi’s graphic about “Black on Black” crime.
Brennan Center: Crime Rates ‘At Historic Lows’
The Brennan Center for Justice released an updated report on April 20, 2016, showing that information from 2015 reveals that crime in the United States is down across the board. According to Ames Grawert and James Cullen:
“The average person in a large urban area is safer walking on the street today than he or she would have been at almost any time in the past 30 years.”
Though the Brennan Center’s report does mention that crime in certain specific areas has increased as much as 13.2 percent, they also state that:
“…In absolute terms, murder rates are so low that a small numerical increase can lead to a large percentage change.”
Again, it goes back to overall trends. This country is NOT, overall, an unsafe place to live, work, and raise a family.
Back To That Minority Outreach …
Trump attempts to use his cherry-picked statistics in what he seems to think is outreach to minority voters, with whom he is polling in the single digits. The thing is, his “outreach” is condescending and racist. He loves to talk about how minority voters are wallowing in crime, but he says these things to White audiences who sit there and wring their hands while they think of those poor Black folks in the inner cities.
Meanwhile, many African-American commentators see this so-called outreach for what it is – outreach to White people.
See the Orange Menace on O’Reilly’s show, discussing crime here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw2vrinS1Ys
Featured Image via YouTube Screen Capture.
