Watching
The Daily Show alerted me to this one. Donald Trump retweeted this bullshit infographic a billion years ago (not sure why we're talking about it
now but whatever):
And while I'm not thrilled that a presidential candidate does not seem to give two shits about fact-checking, I'm glad he brought this to national attention for
other fact checkers and journalists to debunk because I have definitely seen people I know—who would even deny being racist and are just as terrified of a Trump presidency as I am—share this. In earnest.
And to make the point clear, these numbers are completely fabricated.
I guess I could have Googled "Crime Statistics Bureau San Francisco" but you know what? I don't get paid to fact check everything everyone posts on Facebook. The easier thing to do is just to follow Snopes so you get the most egregious stories fact checked
before they get to your clueless aunt.
Thank you for sharing this (sharing the debunking of it, rather!). I've seen this so many times on Facebook and Twitter, it's mind-boggling. At this point, do we even CARE that Donald Trump is making shit up? He could tweet something like "40% of all Americans are killed every year by giant city-destroying prehistoric monsters, and 97% of giant city-destroying prehistoric monsters from the depths of the ocean are Mexicans" and people would retweet it like #BuildTheWall!!! The lack of any kind of reality in this election is so disheartening.
ReplyDeleteThe date on this Tweet is 2015, so maybe me seeing other people post it before then is a fever dream (or maybe I saw some other bogus "statistic" about murder rates) but god DAMN we need to start teaching people how to use the Internet. Or, idk, make sure the default page everyone follows on Facebook etc. is like Snopes and FactCheck.org.
Delete