Following a December interview President-elect Donald Trump gave with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” conservatives online called out NBC for “fact-checking” Trump’s claims after the fact. In the aftermath of the interview, the network released an article that pushed back on various claims Trump made surrounding topics such as crime and illegal immigration.
One claim NBC took particular issue with was when Trump said, “Look, our country is a mess. We have the highest crime rate.” The president-elect also noted, “A lot of that is migrant crime.” The outlet claimed that crime was “broadly down.” The article added there was “no evidence” that there was a crime wave driven by migrants, despite the prevalent number of murders allegedly committed by illegal immigrants over the past several years, such as Laken Riley’s murder or the more recent attack on the New York City Subway in which a woman was fatally set on fire.
The influential conservative X account Libs of TikTok wrote, “NBC is “fact checking” Trump’s interview this morning and they’re repeating the lies that crime is down. Trump is right. Crime is not down. Some major cities just stopped reporting it and the FBI recently quietly updated their crime statistics which was missing thousands of crimes. CRIME IS UP.”
The account shared various screenshots backing up its argument, including a former post from Libs of TikTok which stated, “VIolent crime is NOT down. Cities just stopped reporting their crime data. Another Kamala lie.” The post shared an article from CNN which said, “Violent crime is down and the US murder rate is plunging, FBI Statistics show.” Another screenshot featured a NewsNation article which read, “Cities Nationwide Not Reporting Crime Data to FBI.”
Libs of TikTok shared another previous post, in which they wrote, “The FBI just quietly updated their crime data for 2022. Turns out it was missing thousands of crimes! The update data shows there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 m*rders, 7,780 r*pes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults.”
The American Tribune reported on other parts of the Trump interview with Welker, in which he called out various other problems in the United States. “We’re getting the worst gang probably with MS-13, and the Venezuelan gangs are the worst in the world. They’re vicious, violent people,” Trump said. “And you’ve seen what they’ve done in Colorado and other places. They’re taking over, they’re literally taking over apartment complexes and doing it with impunity. They don’t care.”
Asking Trump about his deportation agenda, Welker said, “Let’s talk about mass deportation, one of your big agenda items. You’ve talked about prioritizing people who have criminal histories, correct? But is it your plan to deport everyone who is here illegally over the next four years?” Trump responded, “I think you have to do it, and it’s a hard … it’s a very tough thing to do.”
Emphasizing the rule of law, Trump continued, “But you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws that came in illegally. You know the people that have been treated very unfairly are the people that have been in line for 10 years to come into the country. And we’re going to make it very easy for people to come in, in terms of, they have to pass the test.”
“They can’t come out of prisons. We don’t want people that are in for murder. So we had — different estimates, 13,099 murders released into our country over the last three years. They’re walking down the streets. They’re walking next to you and your family,” he said, highlighting the consequences of the wide open southern border.
Watch a clip from the interview below:
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