Federal data shows the national crime rate has dropped under President Biden
Donald Trump backed out of an interview after a local paper asked him for data to back up his continued baseless claims that crime is on the rise under President Joe Biden.
The Detroit News reported that Trump’s campaign had agreed to an interview with the former president on Tuesday after a campaign speech. However, the campaign suddenly claimed Trump no longer had time for the interview after a reporter began probing them on crime data.
“The Trump campaign had initially agreed that Trump would participate in an interview with The Detroit News on Tuesday,” state politics reporter Craig Mauger wrote. “But after the newspaper began asking about the Michigan crime data before the event, a campaign aide said the presidential candidate no longer had time for an interview after the speech.”
It would have been best if there was fact checking as part of the debate, but as you speculated, there’s no way Trump would agree to that. And, to be fair, it’s probably a difficult thing to do live and accurately in timely manner.
However, other news agencies were doing fact checking during and following the debate.
Yes, it’s certainly not easy to check facts live. But you can at least be well prepared, especially as the questions are asked by the journalists and they should also know the usual claims made by the candidates. I also don’t think it’s necessary to check every figure. I just mean that it makes sense to name obvious false statements as such - Trump has made enough of them, and most of them were anything but new. And yes, it is of course also true that there are fact-checks after the fact, but I think that this is often not noticed at all. The presidential debates are an event that many people watch, but unfortunately only a few inform themselves afterwards. That’s why I think it’s necessary to expose at least the grossest untruths immediately.