Gutfeld rails against Fox News co-host over dismissal of nationwide crime surge

Over the course of 2020, cities across the U.S. registered a sharp increase in murder and violent crime.

Those statistics have been largely downplayed by those in the mainstream media, however, as Fox News Channel host Greg Gutfeld pointed out in a contentious segment of The Five this week.

“The mugshots that you would prefer”

In particular, he criticized the tendency of news outlets to ignore crime trends that do not align with the prevailing progressive talking points.

At one point during the on-air discussion, a tense shouting match erupted between Gutfeld and co-host Juan Williams.

After Williams asserted that crime fears are the result of a right-wing “fantasy,” he laughed off Gutfeld’s recitation of statistics showing an uptick in violent crime.

“There is no crime,” Williams proclaimed, to which Gutfeld noted that criminal activity has gone up in all corners of the country.

“Felonious assault up 42%, grand larceny up 81%, murder is up 51% since 2019, and again I say hate crime is up 500%, but that does not matter because the felons don’t match the mugshots that you would prefer,” Gutfeld retorted.

“Facts tell nothing to him”

He went on to take aim at the popular leftist narrative of “systemic racism,” arguing that white unarmed suspects are more likely to die at the hands of police.

Gutfeld warned that toxic “ideology” is serving to demoralize those working in law enforcement, thus making exacerbating the crime problem.

While many on the left focus on police reform, there is considerably less emphasis on addressing the crime rate. For the better part of a year, progressive activists have fixated on police brutality even as they downplayed the lawlessness that came to define many protests and riots across the U.S.

Of course, Gutfeld is not alone in expressing concern about the indifference of many in the media regarding crime statistics. Independent journalist Michael Tracey recently insisted that he been personally accused of spreading reactionary propaganda simply for reporting statistics.

Joe Simonson of the Washington Examiner reported that murder rates have reached levels not seen since the 1990s. It seems the facts no longer matter to a growing segment of the population — because as former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov once said, a person who is thoroughly propagandized is “unable to assess true information” and the “facts tell nothing to him.”

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