Conservative pundit Candace Owens claimed Black men in Baltimore is “leading” in rape crime statistics. She was wrong.

During an appearance on The Ingraham Angle alongside attorney Monique Pressley, Owens defended Donald Trump’s racist comments about the Maryland metropolis, spewing unfounded allegations about Baltimore.

“Do not defend Baltimore as a city, don’t do that to Black America. Don’t pretend that being in third place… somehow makes Trump a liar. They are leading a homicide! They are leading in rape! They are leading in sexual assault,” the 30-year-old made up. “Black Americans are suffering in the city. Because you don’t like trump you’re going to split hairs and pretend this is somehow okay because they are ranked third? We deserve better than that as a community. We deserve Trump!”

As journalist and SiriusXM host Clay Cane pointed out, this is a blatant lie and it is “media malpractice” to have Owens on television. Watch the clip below:

Statista.com reports no other city in Maryland ranks in the top 50.Instead, Anchorage, Alaska tops the list, with 125.1 rapes per 100,000 people, three times the national average. Anchorage is 63.65% white and only 5.48% Black. 

Pueblo, Colorado ranks second with 120.9 sexual assaults per 100,000 and Rapid City, South Dakota comes in third with 117.9 rapes per 100,000. Nationally, the rate is 27 per 100,000.
Forbes has Saginaw, Michigan as number one, Anchorage  at number two and Baltimore is not on their list. 

In 2014, CNN reported the state of Maryland was in the bottom ten of where rape is the most common. 

Owens’ words encourages the myth of the Black male rapist, which is an ongoing theme in history, often used as an excuse to lynch Black men.

In 2017, Biljana Oklopčić’s of the University of Osijek described how the stereotype of the Black male rapist originated in the southern states.

“Invented after emancipation, the Black rapist stereotype was the result of the increasing panic about racial intermixture after the abolition of slavery and reflected the American South's obsession with protecting white womanhood to ensure the purity of the white race. The reproduction of this myth provided the basis for racial control, since it found justification in the belief that rape represented Black men's wish to overthrow the Southern white supremacist society. The Black rapist stereotype centered on the assumption that the Black man, in the act of rape, was trying to reach [the] white Southern woman's social and economic status of which she was the symbol.”

The myth of the Black rapist continues to perpetuate society, the criminal justice system and, clearly, on Fox News by pundits like Candace Owens.