Democrats, in the latest attempt to blame Republicans and rile up the base before the midterms, issued a report saying that states that voted for former President Trump have a more significant crime wave than those that voted for President Biden.
The left-wing-aligned “think tank” called Third Way, trying to shift the blame and defeat a major Republican talking point, published a report called “The Red State Murder Problem,” which shows the murder rate per capita was the highest in the six states that voted for Trump in 2020 and the highest in the top eight of ten in the states that voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.
The report claims that the American people should not believe the “attention-grabbing headlines” from news outlets — FOX News, CNN, and the New York Times — giving an example headline, “US cities hit all-time murder records”:
Every news outlet from FOX to CNN to The New York Times to local newspapers has a story with attention-grabbing headlines like “US cities hit all-time murder records.” Fox News and Republicans have jumped on this and framed it as a “Democrat” problem. They blame it on Democrat’s “soft-on-crime” approach and have even referred to a New York District Attorney’s approach as “hug-a-thug.” Many news stories outside of Fox have also purported that police reform is responsible for this rise in murder and have pointed to cities like New York and Los Angeles.
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The current narrative around crime and murder is convenient and wrong. Whether you’re watching CNN or Fox News, or getting news online or from a traditional newspaper, you would think that the increase in murder is a phenomenon found mostly in liberal cities. Many have tried attributing this increase to Democratic policies, specifically police reform. Republican lawmakers and ad makers have contributed to this narrative through clever messaging and strategies.
In fact, the report from the “think tank” showed that they believe Fox News and Republicans as a whole are trying to play the blame game by saying Democrats have taken the “soft-on-crime” approach despite some national and local Democrats lobbying for defunding the police.
But, it also acknowledged that many news stories indicate “police reform is responsible for this rise in murder and noting that “blue” cities — Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, and Philadelphia — have seen a “persistent increase in homicides.”
The report claimed, “A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates.”
It also noted that the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump had the higher average, 8.20 murders per 100,000 residents, and have not tried to defund the police, while the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden had a lower average, 5.78 murders per 100,000 residents.
The “think tank’s” EVP for policy told Axios: “Republicans seem to do a much better job of talking about stopping crime than stopping crime.”
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.
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