Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images. A 2019 spring article, but still important. 

Words really do have consequences.

According to a new study reported by The Washington Post, counties that hosted political rallies with Donald Trump as the headliner in 2016 saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes over comparable counties that did not host such a rally in subsequent months.

The three researchers behind the analysis, who are all professors or graduate students of political science at the University of North Texas, aimed to find out whether Trump’s divisive rhetoric on the campaign trail played a role in emboldening white nationalists. Using data from the Anti-Defamation League that maps out reported incidents of hate crimes, the authors designed a metric to measure how Trump’s campaign rallies correlated with incidences of hate crimes.

Their findings: “Trump’s rhetoric may encourage hate crimes.”

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