The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board came to Donald Trump’s defense this week after Trump defended New York’s “stop and frisk” policy, even though the board has opposed Trump in the past.
Trump mixed it up at Monday night’s debate by saying the moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, was “wrong” when he said stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional by a court. But the Journal said Trump’s argument was mostly correct, and criticized Holt for ignoring some of the facts surrounding the case.
“We rate Mr. Trump’s claim true and unfairly second-guessed by a moderator who didn’t give the viewing public all the facts,” wrote the Journal in an editorial published Tuesday night.
“Our inner cities — African-Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot,” Trump said during the debate. “In Chicago, they’ve had thousands of shootings, thousands, since Jan. 1; thousands of shootings. And I’m saying, where is this? Is this a war-torn country? What are we doing? And we have to stop the violence. We have to bring back law and order. … Now, whether or not in a place like Chicago you do Stop and Frisk, which worked very well. … It worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate way down.”
Holt said he wanted to “follow-up” and told Trump, “stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York” because it targeted minorities.
“No, you’re wrong,” replied Trump. “It went before a judge who was a very-against-police judge. It was taken away from her and our [former] mayor [Michael Bloomberg, who supported the policy]. Our new mayor [Bill de Blasio], refused to go forward with the case. They would have won on appeal. If you look at it, throughout the country, there are many places where it’s allowed.”
Holt pushed back by saying some see stop and frisk, which lets police question and frisk suspicious people, is a “form of racial profiling.”
But the Journal pointed out that Trump’s explanation of the facts hold up.
Stop and frisk was adopted in New York in the 1990s under GOP mayor Rudy Giuliani. Under his tenure from 1994 to 2001, it is well documented that there was a dramatic decrease in violent crime.
When Michael Bloomberg took office, the police department reduced use of the practice but it remained intact.
In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled the practice unconstitutional, though the Bloomberg administration appealed the ruling and had it successfully moved to a different court, noting that there was evidence Scheindlin may not have been impartial on the subject.
But the case outlasted Bloomberg’s tenure and when de Blasio assumed office, his administration dropped the appeal, leaving the initial ruling intact.
Fact-checkers in the press focused solely on the portion of the debate when Trump said, “No, you’re wrong,” to Holt telling him the practice was ruled unconstitutional.
“Trump is wrong: ‘Stop and frisk’ was ruled unconstitutional,” said Politico.
A headline at Washington Post attempted to call out “Trump’s false claim that stop and frisk in NYC wasn’t ruled constitutional.”
The Journal’s editorial board, which has been highly critical of Trump’s candidacy, said that the media “are distorting the record” on the history of stop and frisk and that the candidate was “right to push back” on Holt.
A spokesperson for NBC did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner regarding the exchange between Holt and Trump.
