Earlier this week, CNN’s This Morning sat around, dissecting the tactics of two presidents – Trump and Biden. However, the whole discourse veered off into an over-elaborate, one-sided narrative, positioning Trump as the chief architect of America’s 2020 crime wave. This didn’t sit well with Republican strategist Jesse Hunt who set the record straight on the matter.
The commentary came from The Atlantic writer David Frum who painted a grim image of crime rates under Trump. His account was glaringly biased, conveniently missing out on the upside – the significantly reduced crime rates throughout the majority of Trump’s presidency, courtesy largely of Republican policies. Nonetheless, Frum pinned the “steepest increase in crime since the 60s” on Trump’s account and implicated his supposed “lax gun laws.”
Overlooking the conspicuous events of 2020, Frum laid the entire blame of the crime wave on Trump’s gun policies. Ignored were the horrifying episodes of violence, lootings, and destruction that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s death under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement. The calls for defunding the police only added fuel to this.
A study by the Heritage Foundation pointed to a “toxic trio” – “rogue prosecutors, defund the police zealotry, and demonization/demoralization of the police” as the main culprits. Jesse Hunt echoed this view, explicitly mentioning how this phenomenon was rampant mainly in Democrat-led cities. According to Hunt, the Democrats only realized the extent of the problem when poll numbers faltered in the face of widespread destruction and crime surge.
Despite Hunt’s arguments, Frum seemed convinced that the gun bought, stolen, and misused was probably because of Trump. Reality, however, diverges far from Frum’s assumptions. Georgetown University’s study highlights that guns are used defensively in around 1.67 million incidents yearly. Stephen Gutowski from The Reload also pointed out in 2022 the considerable delay between legal gun purchase and its criminal misuse.
To use Frum’s words, the “crap product” here seems to be his emphatic insistence on picturing Trump as the prime villain. By piecing together half-told truths, the discourse didn’t aim at achieving a balanced perspective. Instead, the objective seemed to veer towards pinning blame while completely bypassing the elaborate sequence of legislation and events that resulted in the spike of crime rates.
And that’s where the problem lies with our media narratives today. They’ve become a cocktail of selective facts blended with personal biases, leaving no room for the real, unembellished truth. Substantial debates are swapped for monologues that serve certain political interests. It’s high time we move away from these skewed narrative and allow facts to tell their stories without prejudice.
