The FBI released its hate crime report for 2017 today. Here’s the nickel summary:

We were making slow but steady progress all the way through the Obama administration. Then in 2015 Donald Trump rode down the escalator in Trump Tower and declared that Mexicans were all a bunch of rapists. Hate crimes spiked up after that, and then spiked up again in 2016 and 2017.
Correlation is not causation. But in this case, I’m pretty sure it is. Anyone care to make a case for some other explanation?