Obama Debunks Trump’s Politics Of Fear
ThinkProgress
President Obama devoted part of his speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention to debunking the fearful brand of politics Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is selling to the American people.
“Ronald Reagan called America ‘a shining city on a hill.’ Donald Trump calls it ‘a divided crime scene’ that only he can fix,” Obama said. “It doesn’t matter to him that illegal immigration and the crime rate are as low as they’ve been in decades, because he’s not offering any real solutions to those issues. He’s just offering slogans, and he’s offering fear. He’s betting that if he scares enough people, he might score just enough votes to win this election.”
Illegal immigration and crime are two centerpieces of Trump’s campaign. Trump has asserted both are are worsening problems in the country, routinely saying things like, “A nation without borders is no nation at all” and “Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse.”
But the data and research provides no support for either notion. Studies show immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Furthermore, the number of undocumented immigrants in the country actually peaked in 2007 and has remained relatively flat for the last half-decade.
Serious crime in the United States has been falling even longer than that. From 1993 through 2012, the country’s violent crime rate was nearly cut in half, and last year the U.S. murder rate hit a 33-year low as the number of serious crimes committed nationwide fell for the eighth year consecutively. In October, the Congressional Research Service published a paper entitled “Is Violent Crime in the United States Increasing?” The study notes that despite media coverage that would lead you to believe crime is rising in American cities, “homicide and violent crime rates have been trending downward for more than two decades, and both rates are at historic lows.”
Beyond debunking two central planks of Trump's platform, Obama presented a more hopeful vision of America. In his peroration, he said, "This year, in this election, I’m asking you to join me –- to reject cynicism, reject fear, to summon what’s best in us; to elect Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States, and show the world we still believe in the promise of this great nation."
Trump, meanwhile, continued to dwell on the negative while Obama spoke:
Our country does not feel 'great already' to the millions of wonderful people living in poverty, violence and despair.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2016
