In a recent report, the Biden Department of Justice amended the crime statistics for 2022 and most of 2023, changing the numbers and noting that crime has not actually fallen, as claimed, but rather rose by over 4% for the period, a dramatic change. That shows that Trump was right and David Muir wrong in the debate, when Muir claimed that crime has fallen.
As background, the issue of crime has remained prominent ever since the unrest and rioting of 2020, with many on the right, including former President Donald Trump, arguing that crime has risen in the United States, particularly violent crime, while those on the left, including both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris dispute that characterization of crime. Particularly, they claim that statistics show that crime has fallen.
The new report, which covers from 2022 through September 2023, is a large swing from the original data. That original data showed that violent crime fell by 2.1% during the period at issue. However, the Wednesday, October 16 update shows that, rather violent crime rose by 4.5% over the time span, vindicating those like Trump who have claimed it increased all along.
In fact, the new data shows Trump was right during the debate, when CBS News host David Muir tried fact-checking him for claiming violent crime is up. During the debate, Trump said, commenting on violent crime, “Yeah. It is much higher because of them. They allowed criminals. Many, many, millions of criminals. They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country, and they’re now in the United States. And told by their countries like Venezuela, ‘don’t ever come back or we’re going to kill you.'”
He continued, “Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down? You know why? Because they’ve taken their criminals off the street and they’ve given them to her to put into our country. And this will be one of the greatest mistakes in history for them to allow — and I think they probably did it because they think they’re going to get votes. But it’s not worth it. Because they’re destroying the fabric of our country by what they’ve done.”
He added, “There’s never been anything done like this at all. They’ve destroyed the fabric of our country. Millions of people let in. And all over the world crime is down. All over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime. And it’s happening at levels that nobody thought possible.”
Muir then snidely tried to fact-check the former president’s violent crime claim, pointing to the then-unedited FBI crime statistics purporting to show that violent crime is down, not up. He said, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country, but Vice President the…”
Trump called him out and argued the FBI statistics were incorrect, which turned out to be true, saying, “The FBI — they were defrauding statements. They didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”
Watch that here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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