On Friday's Across America with Carol Costello on HLN, during a discussion of the political reaction to the murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an illegal immigrant, liberal CNN commentator Maria Cardona misleadingly claimed that most crimes are committed by white men.
Host Costello began the segment by playing a clip of Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren reacting poorly to the death of Tibbetts as she appeared on CNN. Costello cringed at the Massachusetts Democrat's response, and then brought aboard her two guests -- one right-leaning and one left-leaning.
After Cardona bemoaned the fact that Warren did not have a better response to the killing, she launched into Trump and exaggerated: "Where he is wrong is where he impugns all immigrants -- undocumented or not -- by painting them all as criminals."
She soon repeated a recurring liberal talking point about white men posing a greater danger than illegal immigrants as she added: "The majority of crimes are committed by white men. Are we going to now impugn all white men as criminals? That would be as ridiculous as what Donald Trump is doing with all immigrants."
Because the discussion was about violent crime, the implication was that white men are more dangerous than other groups. But Politifact -- which has written on this topic in the past -- points out that the FBI crime statistics that report a racial breakdown on arrests do not count Hispanics as a race. Therefore, many Hispanics are counted as white while a portion may even be counted as black.
Additionally, when one looks specifically at homicides, whites clearly commit significantly less than half of incidents nationwide.
No one questioned the claim as the segment continued.
