How do you know when something is real? Like, as real as my blue eyes or Tyrus’s tattoos or Julie’s wine consumption? 

You know when something is real when the statistics match the stories — when you have mind-boggling increases in crime, from carjackings to murder to hate crimes, which are then coupled with absolutely horrible stories that make the statistics come alive.

I’ve been on this planet for maybe 50 years after immigrating from California, and I’ve never seen anything like this. 

NYPD patrol car.
(iStock)

I know crime victims, and I’m not just talking about people who bought Kilmeade’s last book. Now we’ve covered the stats and the stories until we were blue in the face. 

So how could anyone deny them? Well, it turns out it’s really easy if you have help. We’ve been mapping this gleeful denial since it started, and it began where all lies begin — with CNN. 

DON LEMON: Democratic cities are in chaos right now. Is this what you want from Joe Biden, and they’re going to take your country away and they’re taking down the statues and crime is rising. My gosh, it’s so bad, and they are defunding police.

Yeah. Shouldn’t Don Lemon retract his eye-rolling since everything he just eye-rolled happened? But if you listen to conservative media, well. 

CNN’s Don Lemon.
(Paul Marotta/Getty Images)

LEMON: You listen to conservative media, you would think that, you know, entire cities are just, you know, in brawls and fights and fires and whatever. We went out, had a great dinner in New York City tonight. People actually walked up to us and said, “Thank you for — I watch you every night.”

What a lie. The only people watching Don Lemon every night are in Gitmo. It’s how they get them to talk. 

No one watches Don Lemon by choice. Now we play that clip a lot not just for entertainment value, but because we knew where this was going. 

It was the beginning of the cover your a–, not cover the news, strategy where they knew they were responsible for the anti-police, pro-crime environment. This was the denial stage. But then when they saw crime could hurt them politically, they changed their tune. 

AHEAD OF BIDEN VISIT, NYC CRIME UP 38% IN MOST RECENT 28 DAYS, WITH UPTICKS IN SHOOTINGS, SUBWAY CRIMES

LEMON: I think this is a blind spot for Democrats. I think Democrats are ignoring this problem or hoping that it will go away, and it’s not going to go away. Joe Biden may be afraid to do it. I’m not sure. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he is. He’s got to address it. The rioting has to stop. Chris, as you know and I know, it’s showing up in the polling, it’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing right now that is sticking. 

It’s showing up in the polls. There goes your great dinner in NYC. I guess politics affects your appetite, not human suffering. 

But that was just the tip of the scum-berg. As all the data came out on crime, we continue to cover it because we cared about our viewers. And so CNN attacked the messenger because they found themselves on the wrong side. 

BRIAN STELTER: Some examples of the banners on Fox News in the past few days — you get the sense that America’s gone to hell. Declining quality of life. America is an apocalyptic hellscape, and yes, there is a crime problem. But the way it’s described on Fox, you’d be afraid to leave your house. 

Brian Stelter of CNN.
( Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)

CNN journalist: I kind of think of it as an Instagram filter, Brian. You know, you start with a real image and then you take the filter and you pump it up 1,000 percent. And what you’re left with is distorted. It no longer reflects reality.

STELTER: Instagram filter. That’s going to stay with me. That’s the perfect way to describe it. 

Oh man, I wonder if it’s an Instagram filter that’s responsible for tripling his chins. 

So people are dying, but it’s Fox headlines calling attention to the deaths that really irk these ghouls. The truth we report is kryptonite to their false narrative. 

And of course, now you see Peppermint Patty dismissing crime because, well, she hates the messenger too.

JEN PSAKI: On Fox is Jeanine Pirro talking about soft-on-crime consequences. I mean, what does that even mean? Right? So there’s an alternate universe on some coverage. What’s scary about it is a lot of people watch that. 

Yeah, what’s scary about it is you and your boss and all the folks who work for him are living in that alternate universe, and the victims that you insult — they live somewhere else. 

Of course, he asks, “What does that even mean?” As if crime stats come out in Latin. Maybe we can get an expert to answer her.

DOMINIQUE RIVERA: The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA.

Maybe that’ll jog Jen’s memory. Fact is, people are dying all over from violent crime, and Jen dismisses it because it didn’t affect her pilates class.

Imagine doing that with victims of police brutality or COVID. Apparently, it’s OK to mock crime victims because those victims don’t rate. They aren’t romanticized. 

So what alternative universe do you live in? Sadly, the dangerous one that people like Psaki’s boss helped create, but don’t see — it’s a place where women are pushed to their deaths, teens are murdered, businesses are ransacked until they close, and elderly Asians are beaten unconscious. 

The media spent a year telling us how people that walk through the Capitol are worse than 9/11 while completely ignoring all of that. 

What an unlucky universe crime victims live in because unlike the media, they don’t have armed security around the clock. 

They don’t have personal chauffeurs safely taking them to and from work, or an assistant who can run to the store and get them suppositories. 

And yet the media claim to be in danger on Jan. 6, but no, their universe is secure. 

They only get scared when they forget the sunscreen at the Hamptons. So what happens when you see bad things with your very own eyes, and you pointed out and people like Psaki laugh at you like they just swallowed an ounce of magic mushrooms? 

And the media safe behind their security and anonymity laugh along like schoolkids who just heard a knock-knock joke. I guess pretending a massive increase in murders is no big deal is literally the best they can do. 

And if bad things don’t affect them, then they didn’t happen at all. But it’s a cover-up in plain sight, so we don’t notice what caused the crime wave, which is them. 

Together, the media’s disregard for rising crime and the progressive embrace of policies that rewarded the criminal created the crime wave, and now they’re covering it up. 

Now they need to change that narrative. 

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They need to apply their radical politics almost like an Instagram filter. Sure, this brutal murder of a young girl looks bad, but factor in that cash bail discriminates against the poor, and there’s prison overcrowding, which is cruel, and there’s COVID in jail. 

And isn’t this suspect really the victim? Did you know he has dyslexia? He’s addicted to meth and has gender dysmorphia? He thinks he’s a woodland nymph.

Frankly, isn’t the criminal society itself? Yes, society is the culprit. It’s the new way to blame the victim. It’s a trick these hacks use to sleep well at night, also heavily medicated so they can’t hear the screams. 

This article is adapted from Greg Gutfeld’s opening monologue on the February 1, 2022 edition of “Gutfeld!”