Guess what? Donald Trump has actually found a judge that he likes. This particular gentleman happens to be the Appellate judge who today gave Trump more time to post bond in his New York civil fraud case, as well as reducing the amount that he needs to post while the case goes to appeal.
Trump came out of the courtroom and actually said that he ‘respected’ the decision and would abide by the requirement to put up the necessary cash at the required time. He then, of course, took another swipe at the judge who imposed the initial fine, and managed to mispronounce Judge Engoron’s last name.
Trump then went on a brief rant (for him) stating that the decision against him was just another example of why New York City is in such a state of decline with businesses going to new locations out of town and a ‘terrible’ increase in crime.
I found Trump’s claim about New York being chick-full of criminality because thanks to the New York Police Department database, this is a very easy issue to verify just in case Trump is actually telling the truth.
But don’t worry – he’s not. His claim that crime is ‘overwhelming’ the city isn’t even close.
Here are the stats for New York City crimes comparing January 2023 to January 2024:
Murder – down 25%.
Rape – down 24%.
Robbery – up 5%.
Assault – down 1.5%.
Burglary – down 20%.
Larceny – no change.
Auto theft – down 4%.
Overall crime – down 3%.
This issue of big cities being the worst locations for crime has been floating around the political lexicon ever since the big cities became primarily blue and the smaller cities and rural zones became mostly red. The data is not as clear as we might like, because crime tends to be highest in Southern cities with large black populations, even though on a statewide basis these states tend to be majority white.
So, what happens is that Southern states like Mississippi and Alabama are more red than blue when it comes to the makeup of Congressional delegations and electoral college votes, but the bigger cities in those states are the locations of most of the crime.
The problem with attaching too much significance to crime is that despite some surveys which show that Americans believe crime is on the rise, Americans always believe that crime is worse now than it used to be, which is primarily a response to the media treatment of the issue, i.e., ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’
My father-in-law, who lived in Brooklyn, always made a point of getting home from work by 5 P.M. If for some reason he didn’t come through the front door until 5:30, he would miss the Channel 5 local news. And if he missed the Channel 5 News, he wouldn’t get to see that day’s report on some shooting or robbery somewhere in the city, which would get him good and pissed off until he finished dinner, sat down in his living room easy chair, had a smoke and promptly fell asleep.
Last week Quinnipiac published their most recent Presidential poll, which showed Trump and Biden basically to be in a dead heat. Respondents were asked to rank the issues which would influence their voting choice, and the only issues which both Democrats and Republicans put in double digits were the economy, immigration and preserving democracy.
Know what issue got the lowest percentage of respondents saying it was the most urgent issue facing the country today? Crime, okay? Actually, the 4% of the respondents who said that crime was he most urgent issue was matched by another 4% who said that the most urgent issue was climate change.
Incidentally, the Quinnipiac poll did not ask respondents any question that might have shed some light on whether Trump being found guilty in any of the upcoming court cases would determine how people would or wouldn’t vote for him come November 5th.
But what we do learn from this poll is that Trump’s complaining about all the crime in New York won’t help him one bit.
ความคิดเห็น