Singer and actress Bette Midler attempted to correct President Trump's statement on Chicago shootings from his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening, but her effort ended up misrepresenting the facts.
"In Chicago, more than 4,000 people were shot last year alone–and the murder rate so far this year has been even higher," Trump said during his speech.
Midler took to Twitter early Wednesday morning and cited a Chicago Tribune article in an attempt to prove Trump wrong.
Trump says that 4000 people were shot in Chicago in 2016. Chicago Tribune says 2016 ended with 762 homicides. https://t.co/f0AoJBDexV
— Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) March 1, 2017
However, Midler was incorrect asserting that Trump was inflating the numbers. Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, 4,367 people were shot in Chicago, according to the Tribune. The actress appeared to infer that each of the 4,000 people Trump referenced who were shot were also killed, which is not the case.
Trump was correct about the approximate number of people shot in Chicago last year.
The current murder rate in the city, however, is on pace to result in fewer homicides for 2017. There have been 103 homicides in the city from Jan. 1 to the present, a two-month period, which would extrapolate to about 618 for the year, according to the Tribune. There were just under 800 total homicides in 2016.
UPDATED March 2, 10:50 A.M.: This post was updated to clarify that the murder rate in Chicago this year is on pace to result in fewer homicides than in 2016. The original version made it appear that the story was comparing the numbers from the first two months of 2017 to the numbers for the entire year of 2016, without taking into account extrapolation.