Real estate mogul and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump defended sharing a tweet that displayed erroneous statistics on crimes committed by white people, black people and police, saying it was a re-tweet that came from “a radio show and other places.”
The tweet, sent Sunday, cites “USA Crime Statistics” in 2015 from something called the Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco that included “Blacks killed by whites — 2%,” “Blacks killed by police — 1%,” “Whites killed by blacks — 81%,” and “Blacks killed by blacks — 97%.”
It earned a “pants on fire” rating from Politifact.
Mr. Trump said Monday evening on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” that he’s “probably the least racist person on earth.”
“Bill, I didn’t tweet — I re-tweeted somebody that was supposedly an expert and it was also a radio show,” Mr. Trump said. “Am I [going to] check every statistic? I’ve got millions and millions of people. … You know what? Fine. But this came out of radio shows and everything else.”
“All it was is a re-tweet — it wasn’t from me — and it … came out of a radio show and other places,” he said.
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Host Bill O’Reilly then said he’s looking out for every honest politician, no matter what party they’re in.
“Don’t do this,” Mr. O’Reilly told Mr. Trump. “Don’t put your name on stuff like this.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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