(The Lion) — The liberal media – or “drive-by media,” as Rush Limbaugh used to call them – appear eager to use anything they can to paint Donald Trump in a negative light.
The latest attempt involves restaurant numbers.
A report by OpenTable found restaurant reservations dipped 31% year over year during the first week of Trump’s Washington, D.C., crime crackdown. According to Fox 5 in D.C., Trump’s claims about restaurants being busy “contradicts the data.”
But does it make sense that a safer city would cause people not to go out to eat? Or was there another reason?
Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute’s Public Understanding of Economics took a closer look at the numbers and discovered a different cause: Restaurant Week.
The city held its mid-summer Restaurant Week encouraging people to eat out Aug. 12–18, 2024, with some 350 restaurants offering special pricing and meals to “boost reservation rates in the lean summer period,” Bourne wrote.
The OpenTable report highlighted a large drop in dining this year – which overlapped with Trump’s crackdown – without emphasizing that the 2025 Restaurant Week started Aug. 18.
Essentially, the comparison was apples to oranges – or should we say hamburgers to filet mignon?
Of course, restaurant reservations were down this year because restaurant week began at the end of the period that was examined.
Yet the “drive-by media” seized on the claim. “More dirt on Trump!” was likely said in newsrooms, with few questions raised.
“I’m surprised more journalists didn’t review this claim skeptically,” Bourne wrote. “It’s surely a classic example of motivated reasoning – that because something you don’t like is happening, it must be causing other devastating effects.”
There’s a famous phrase: “Lies, damn lies and statistics.” Perhaps it should be updated to include “liberal media bias.”
So, there was a cause for the decline in numbers, but it wasn’t Trump’s fault.
One week from now, D.C. may well exceed its Restaurant Week totals from last year. But you probably won’t hear about it in the mainstream media, because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
If Trump isn’t to blame – or worse, does something right – they’re not interested. To them, it simply isn’t news.
But the fact remains: his policies are working. Crime is down and offenders are being locked up. That is bound to improve the city – including its restaurants.
The anti-Trump bias has gone on for far too long. It’s time to make the mainstream media history!
