To test this, we aggregated hate-crime incident data and Trump rally data to the county level and then used statistical tools to estimate a rally’s impact. We found that counties that had hosted a 2016 Trump campaign rally saw a 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally. However, suggestions that this effect can be explained through a plethora of faux hate crimes are at best unrealistic. Additionally, it is hard to discount a “Trump effect” when a considerable number of these reported hate crimes reference Trump. What’s more, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime report in 2017, reported hate crimes increased 17 percent over 2016.

Source: Washington Post March 22, 2019 11:45 UTC