http://www.ijreview.com/2013/04/47147-john-kerry-tells-whopper-about-fewer-foreign-students-coming-to-america-because-of-gun-violence-concerns/ John Kerry Tells Whopper About Fewer Foreign Students Coming to America Due to Gun Violence Concerns
John Kerry might not be aware of this thing called New Media; but unlike CNN, people are actually going to bother checking whether or not his statements are true, regardless of his political party.
CNN ran this headline from his interview: “Kerry: Foreign students ‘scared’ of guns in U.S.” This is what the former presidential candidate and U.S. Senator and current Secretary of State had to say:
“We had an interesting discussion about why fewer students are coming to, particularly from Japan, to study in the United States. And one of the responses I got from our officials, from conversations with parents here, is that they’re actually scared. They think they’re not safe in the United States and so they don’t come.”Only… foreign students are coming to America in record numbers to study. According to a late 2012
report on Voice of America:
The report documents the record number of international students in the United States during the
[2011-2012] year. It says more than [764,400] such students were attending American colleges and universities during that period. That represents an increase of almost
six percent compared to one year earlier.
By comparison, the number of Americans studying overseas increased by one percent.
The report says [194,000] students at American colleges and universities were from China. That is an increase of more than twenty-three percent over the year before.
As if these statistics alone weren’t bad enough,
gun homicides since 2010 have decreased 22.6%.
So, instead of setting the record straight for the foreign students and easing their concerns, you know, what an ambassadorial Secretary of State representing the U.S.’ best interests would do, Kerry repeats the bunk on a major news media source that then blasts it as a headline.
Glenn Kessler at the
Washington Post picked up on the Kerry statement, but laughably subtracted a Pinocchio from the former Senator’s total because
he’s a Democrat he’s a political amateur who doesn’t understand the power of his words.
That makes three Pinocchios for Kerry, partly because the trend of fewer Japanese students coming to the U.S. goes back more than ten years; and one Pinocchio for Glenn Kessler — because he’s sheltering a Democratic politician who’s been in the Washington game for decades
