The Washington Post’s crusade to resist the Trump administration continues to embarrass.
The president often claims that the 20 “most dangerous” cities are “Democrat-run.” He is basically correct. Democratic mayors preside over 19 of the “most dangerous” cities in the country — if we are to use violent crime per capita as a measuring stick.
The Washington Post, however, published a hilariously failed fact check this weekend claiming otherwise.
“Trump keeps claiming that the most dangerous cities in America are all run by Democrats. They aren’t,” reads the headline to a June 25 analysis authored by Philip Bump.
That is a definitive statement. There is no uncertainty or hemming and hawing. Trump is flat wrong, according to the Washington Post.
Five paragraphs into the article, the author argues the following [emphasis my own]:
The most recent data to that effect is from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report covering the first half of 2019. The cities with the most violent crimes are many of the most populous cities in the country, as you might expect. Those with the highest rates of violent crime are from a range of different states.
Most of the current mayors of these cities are Democrats. Two of the mayors of cities with the most reported violent crimes overall, though, are independents and one, the mayor of Jacksonville, Fla., is a Republican. Among the 20 cities with the most violent crime per capita, one isn’t a Democrat: the independent mayor of Springfield, Mo.
Trump would no doubt shrug at that detail, decrying as “fake news” the revelation that his assertion was only slightly wrong. And, in fairness, it actually doesn’t matter that four of the 32 cities listed above have non-Democratic mayors — because it doesn’t really matter that the other mayors are Democrats.
In other words, Trump is wrong because he is only 95% correct when he says that Democrats control the 20 most dangerous cities in the United States because the mayor of one of the 20 cities with the most violent crime per capita is a registered independent, according to the Washington Post.
This is an embarrassment for everyone involved. It is also a disservice to the paper’s readers, who deserve a bit better than desperate “gotcha” attempts.
Having all but admitted Trump is right, the author ends with this caveat:
To a large extent, of course, Trump isn’t really trying to make a point beyond “cities and Democrats are scary.” He’s not going to win cities but he might scare suburban voters — voters he desperately needs in November — by tying Democrats and crime together.
In 2016, that’s precisely what he tried to do during his speech at the Republican convention. That might be harder this year, given that his convention speech will not be in Charlotte, as originally planned. Instead, Trump will be speaking from Jacksonville, a city with a lot of violent crime that happens to be led by a Republican.
This is what is known as “moving the goalposts.” If Trump’s remark is “problematic” or misleading due to the complexity of the topic, that is one thing. But to say he is factually wrong is just dishonest.
Lastly, if the author believes it is “problematic” to try to establish a causal relationship between something that is bad and political allegiances, then he should probably talk to his Washington Post colleagues who blame Fox News for the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.
