Donald Trump is the man who persisted in his pursuit of President Obama's birth certificate, for years after it was actually produced. Now he's become the man who insists that 'the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics.'

Trump took to Twitter to insist the time had come to 'stop being so politically correct,' adding that he 'must tell it like it is.'

Trump's latest outburst has led some critics to speculate if, now that he's freely making racially loaded claims, NBC will finally cut its ties to the apparently prejudiced reality TV star.

According to Tampa Bay, to bolster his claims that blacks and Hispanics commit the most crimes, Trump quoted figures provided by Fox News Channel anchor Bill O’Reilly as proof.

His first tweet on the subject said: 'According to Bill O'Reilly, 80% of all the shootings in New York City are blacks-if you add Hispanics, that figure goes to 98%. 1% white.'

The other missing 1% may have been his own demographic, but Trump didn't include Wall Street in his broadsides.
Earlier in the week O’Reilly reportedly referenced that statistic during a panel debate about violence in a Philadelphia school on his O’Reilly Factor show,  noting that 'in New York City, 80 percent of all the shootings in the nation's largest town are blacks.'

'If you add Hispanic shooters, 98 percent of all the shootings in New York City are minority, less than one percent are white. So you're seeing not only violence in the schools, but then it translates out into the streets almost exclusively from the minority precincts.'



O’Reilly may have culled his figures from the New York City Police Department report titled 'Crime and Enforcement Activity in New York City.'

Tabulating crimes in New York City by race, the report listed shootings suspects as black 74.7% of the time, 21.9% were Hispanic, and 2.7% were white.

But O'Reilly did not mention that New York City's demographics are more diverse than the rest of nation, with 25% black, 27.5% Hispanic, 2.1% multiethnic and 44.6% white.

Also the report was tabulated by counting crime suspects, not those convicted of any crime, and their race was likely determined by police, with no guarantee of total accuracy.

O'Reilly did not explain what shooting rates in New York City had to do with shooting rates in Philadelphia. He also made no mention of contributing factors such as poverty and gang violence.

Neither Trump nor O'Reilly mention that the majority of white collar crime in New York is committed by white people.

Trump's controversial comments come after reports that suggest the bombastic billionaire is considering entering the presidential race in 2016.