What did Donald Trump do today?

He blamed a mass killing apparently committed by a native-born American on immigrants.

Early this morning, a man deliberately drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people celebrating the new year in New Orleans' Bourbon Street district. He then got into a shootout with police, wounding two officers. Ten people were killed and dozens more were injured.

Trump weighed in at 10:48 this morning with a post on his private social media network, saying it proved what he had been saying about immigrants being responsible for the worst crimes.

When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before. Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!

The suspect is an Army veteran who was born in the United States.

In reality, crime rates are lower than they have ever been in the United States, despite a minor uptick during Trump's presidency. (Trump himself, born in New York, is a convicted criminal.)

Immigrants, documented and undocumented alike, commit far fewer crimes than native-born Americans. That is true of both violent crimes, and crimes in general. 

Immigrants have the strongest incentive to avoid committing even minor crimes, since even a misdemeanor committed while on a valid visa is likely to lead to deportation in practice.

As of early afternoon on the east coast, Trump hasn't made any further statements. That means it's not clear whether Trump knew that the suspect wasn't an immigrant—a fact that had been widely reported at the time—and simply lied, or whether he assumed that a person with a Middle Eastern name must not be an American.

Why does this matter?

• If the only thing you care about when a crime happens is blaming it on immigrants, then you don't "fully support" law enforcement or anyone.

• Lying about imaginary threats to whip up political support is what dictators do.