Per Insider, a now-deleted tweet from Kayleigh McEnany posted on September 23 used a graphic published by The New York Times which showed a drastic rise in the U.S. homicide rate using data from 2020. In her tweet, McEnany, now a Fox News political commentator, attributed the 30% uptick to the White House administration under President Joe Biden (“The U.S. murder rate under Joe Biden…”) — all the while failing to recognize that the statistical data was collected from 2019 to 2020 by the F.B.I., during which Donald Trump, not Biden, served solely as president.
CNN correspondent Brian Stelter was able to screenshot the erroneous tweet before McEnany, who has 1.1 million followers on the platform, deleted it herself. He also pointed out that McEnany spread misinformation to an audience of millions but she didn’t (and has not) do anything about it. “[Kayleigh McEnany] deleted this tweet, which showed 2020’s spike in the murder rate under her then-boss President Trump,” Stelter made the caption for the screenshot. “She falsely blamed Biden. She hasn’t posted a correction or apologized to her followers.” Others replied that they weren’t surprised. “Apologising…carries with it the underlying assumption that someone has done something wrong,” one user explainedwhile analyzing McEnany’s radio silence. “In this case, McEnany doesn’t feel/think/believe she’s done anything wrong…just the opposite.”