President Barack Obama on Friday responded to the end of the Republican National Convention by saying, “some of the fears that were expressed throughout the week just don’t jibe with the facts.”
“I did not watch the convention. I don’t think that’s a surprise. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, and they are pretty long events,” the president said during a news conference, adding that he had read up on many of the claims made during the week, particularly by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Obama went on to pick apart certain dubious statistics and fear-inducing anecdotes about undocumented immigrants.
He noted that the violent crime rate has been lower during his presidency than at any other period in the last several decades. He also noted that while violent crime has seen an uptick in some cities this year, the overall rate of it is far lower than it was both when Ronald Reagan was president and when Obama took office.
“The fact is that the rate of intentional killings of police officers is also significantly lower than it was when Ronald Reagan was president,” he said. “Those are facts. That’s the data.”
The FBI announced in May that 2015 was one of the safest years for cops on record.
Obama also took on Trump’s panic-provoking claim that “nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens” by stating that undocumented immigrants are entering the U.S. at a rate that is two-thirds lower than it was during the Reagan administration.
“We’re not going to make good decisions based on fears that don’t have a basis in fact,” Obama said.
“America is much less violent than it was 20, 30 years ago,” the president added. “And immigration is much less of a problem than it was not just 20, 30 years ago, but when I came in as president.”
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.