Report: Counties That Hosted Trump Rallies Saw 226% Increase In Hate Crimes

Donald Trump

Earlier this week, Donald Trump was asked whether he sees "today that white nationalism is a rising threat around the world?” Trump's response: “I don’t really.”

In the aftermath of the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where a young white man rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer, Trump tried to mitigate white nationalists' responsibility for the violence telling the public that “there’s blame on both sides."

He has repeatedly asserted that he bears no blame or responsibility for the violence.

But analysis by the Washington Post shows that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally.

It is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. According to the ADL’s 2016 data, these incidents included vandalism, intimidation and assault.

What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016. Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.