El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke launched his longshot campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) this week. The media went into full ‘circle the wagons’ mode almost immediately to cover up two big lies in his announcement speech.
His big lies happen at 2:30 in the video.
He claims El Paso, TX is the safest city in Texas, and in the United States. Both claims are patently false. However, when you Google his announcement, the media coverage, for the most part, does not acknowledge he said these two things. They rewrite his speech to say something to the effect of ‘he noted El Paso was one of the safest cities,’ or other similar revisions. Saying El Paso is the safest city in Texas and the US is very different from saying it is one of the safest cities. Which is a dubious claim on its own anyway.
While local politicians from San Diego to El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley routinely claim that their crimestatistics are continuously low, in reality those statistics don’t account for federal crimes that took place in their city such as kidnappings, drug trafficking and other spillover crimes.
Beto, and indeed many others in El Passo, have been using this ‘safest city’ propaganda for a while now. It’s just that, propaganda.
Niche.com’s 2016 rankings have El Paso as the 37th safest city. Not bad, but far from the safest city in the US.
Neighborhood Scout has El Paso in the bottom third for safety. A far cry from safest city.
Rape and assault in El Paso actually outpaces the national average.
Texas Monthly has El Paso ranked 13th for safest city in Texas. Not number 1.
Things are closer to the middle of the pack in El Paso and Laredo, which place at #13 and #10, respectively. The murder rate in each city is low, at 1.4 and 1.5 (Brownsville also comes in at 1.4, which is the second-lowest behind Abilene at 0.6). The numbers in El Paso, Laredo, and McAllen are all slanted heavily toward aggravated assault.
Safewise.com has El Paso as the 77th safest city in Texas. Again, not number 1.
The point is that El Paso isn’t the safest city in Texas, or the United States. Even if it is relatively safe, but the jury is out on that.
So then, why would major media outlets across the country based in places like New York and D.C. go to such lengths to change what Beto O’Rourke said? Where are the ad nauseam fact-checks from those same media outlets on Republicans for Beto’s comments? Where’s the cries from major media of “fake news!,” and the like?
You won’t find them. Beto is a Democrat running against boogieman number two, Ted Cruz. The media wants to bury Cruz, and Trump and their factually correct border narrative. So they chose to cover up Beto’s lies to prevent a gaffe out of the gate.
