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- Kayleigh McEnany deleted a tweet blaming Biden for a spike in murders that occurred under Trump.
- "The U.S. murder rate under Joe Biden…" she wrote about a graphic showing an increase in 2020.
- The graphic, from The New York Times, shows the number of murders increased by nearly 30%.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany deleted a tweet blaming President Joe Biden for a spike in U.S. murders that occurred under her former boss, then-President Donald Trump.
As CNN's Brian Stelter noted, McEnany quote-tweeted a post Thursday morning from Axios reporter Lachlan Markay that highlighted a New York Times graphic showing a significant surge in the number of US murders in 2020 to her 1.1 million followers.
She wrote: "The U.S. murder rate under Joe Biden…" about the graphic before deleting the tweet, presumably after realizing that Trump was president that year.
-Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 23, 2021
The underlying data behind the Times' graphic and article, from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, which is set to be published in full on Monday, showed the number of murders in the United States spiked by nearly 30 percent from 2019 to 2020.
That stat represents the largest year-over-year increase in murders documented since the FBI began collecting yearly data on murders and far surpasses the previous record of 12.7 percent increase in the number of murders in a year, set in 1968.
The US murder rate, defined by the number of murders per 100,000 people, still remains lower than the all-time peak in the 1990s.
The data show that 77% of the murders in 2020 were committed with firearms, The Times said, reporting that the rise in murders was not driven by any particular regions but was nationwide. Overall crime, however, slightly declined.
McEnany, who served as press secretary from April 2020 to the end of the Trump presidency, was accused many times of stretching the truth or outright lying from the podium.
Before becoming press secretary, McEnany wrongly predicted that "we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here."
McEnany lied to the press at least five times during her tenure, including about Trump downplaying COVID-19 (he had), the crowd size of a pro-Trump march, and whether Trump was the first to put a red ribbon on the White House for World AIDS Day (he wasn't).