HATE CRIMES IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: I’ve long suspected that the purported massive increase in hate crimes resulting from the Trump campaign was wildly exaggerated. The new FBI hate crimes stats are out, and hate crimes rose only 5% between 2015 and 2016. The increase isn’t good news, but between what certainly looks like an increase in hate crimes hoaxes and the greater attention paid by the media to real hate crimes, which encourages reporting, there may not be any real increase at all. Certainly, the whole “2016 in the United States is like 1933 in Germany” crowd should be embarrassed. Relatedly, the ADL recently reported a 67% surge in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, which preposterously includes bomb threats made to Jewish institutions that were ultimately traced to a mentally disturbed Jew in Israel.