New York Times reporter Peter Baker made a bold claim — Washington, D.C., is a safe place to be.
A GoFundMe campaign was set up to entice Baker to walk the streets of Washington at night while filming it. That campaign has since been removed, per the Western Journal.
The whole thing started when Baker criticized President Donald Trump for deploying the National Guard to crack down on crime.
“Citing a nonexistent crime crisis, Trump plans to take over the Washington DC police and put troops in the streets of the nation’s capital,” Baker wrote on X. “Contrary to his claims, violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low.”
In another post, Baker pointed to Jan. 6, 2021, as “the worst single-day crime spree in modern Washington history.”
“Trump issued no order to the National Guard to intervene — Mike Pence did — and later pardoned the perpetrators,” he posted.
Tom Elliott, an independent journalist, issued a challenge — he wanted Baker to walk a dangerous route through the city at night and live-stream it.
“I’ll personally pledge $300 for Peter to livestream himself walking the following route, unarmed, after 9 PM on any weekend night,” Elliott wrote on X.
That is when the GoFundMe campaign was started.
The campaign description read, “They say Washington, D.C. is enjoying a 30-year low in violent crime. Sirens? A lullaby. Streetlights? Just mood lighting. And ‘crime crisis’? Pure fiction.”
Elliott then asked Baker to walk a “Trail of Fun” with “no security detail. No pepper spray. Just pure, unfiltered utopia.”
He added he would double his pledge if Baker’s wife did the walk instead.
The money raised was earmarked for a charity of Baker’s choice. Campaign raised about $1,800 of its $3,000 goal as of Wednesday morning.
GoFundMe eventually took the page down.
“Sad news, friends,” Elliott wrote. “@gofundme has canceled our attempts at supporting Peter Baker [to] perform some intrepid journalism in service of the less-advantaged.”
“According to the email I just received, the fundraiser was canceled because such an event was deemed … ‘impossible,” he added.
“Seems they have a more realistic view of the murderousness of D.C. than Peter ‘Non-Existent Crime Crisis’ Baker,” Elliott wrote.
