Donald Trump’s data of doom picked apart

Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump in his acceptance speech said the United States was in a moment of crisis.

The dark portrait of America that Mr Trump sketched was a compendium of doomsday statistics that fell apart on close scrutiny of the media. Numbers were taken out of context, data manipulated, and sometimes even his facts were wrong, a fact highlighted across American newspapers and TV news. As the New York Times put it, Mr Trump launched a “campaign of fear” and his “speech’s sunny spots came mostly from stage lights.”

When facts were inconveniently positive — such as rising incomes and an unemployment rate under 5 per cent — Mr Trump simply did not mention them. He described an exceedingly violent nation, flooded with murders, when in reality, the violent crime rate has been cut in half since the crack cocaine epidemic hit its peak in 1991, according to Reuters.

In his speech, Mr Trump promised to present “the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and your morning newspaper.” But he relied on statistics ripe for manipulation, cited misleading numbers on the economy, for example, through selective use of years, data and sources.

Hillary Clinton’s senior adviser John Podesta dismissed the speech as painting “a dark picture of an America in decline” and “his answer — more fear, more division, more anger, more hate — was a reminder” that Mr Trump “is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be President.”