In the White House Press Conferenceon Thursday, February 5, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced a historic victory delivered by President Donald Trump, noting that the murder rate has been depressed dramatically by his deployments of troops to high-crime cities, and his crackdowns on illegal immigration. In fact, she said, it has fallen to the lowest rate seen since 1900.
For reference, one of the major initiatives made by President Trump has been to crack down on crime in many of America’s big cities by partnering with state and local officials to deploy federal resources and National Guard troopers. The combined effect of those moves has been to seriously decrease the amount of crime seen in the big cities and to, as Trump promised, “restore law and order.”
Now, with those crackdowns on gang activity and arrests of wrongdoers having surged for months, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to the podium to declare that, though the operations are ongoing, progress has been made in a major way, and the promise of law and order is being delivered on.
Beginning, the press secretary said, “A study from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) shows that the murder rate across America’s largest cities plummeted in 2025 to its lowest level since at least 1900.” She then added, “Let me repeat to put this in perspective, this marks the largest single-year drop in murders in recorded history.”
Continuing, Leavitt noted how following through on promised policies has led to these big wins, saying, “This dramatic decline is what happens when a president secures the border, fully mobilizes federal law enforcement to arrest violent criminals and aggressively deport the worst of the worst illegal aliens from our country.”
She further noted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been cracking down in a major way by dramatically ramping up the number of arrests it has made, delivering steady wins against violent crime by taking the criminals off the street. She said, “The numbers don’t lie. Under President Trump in 2025, the FBI increased violent crime arrests by 100% compared to the prior year.”
Building on that by showing just how much of an increase we have seen over the past few months, compared to what the Biden Administration was doing, she said, “The FBI also conducted more than 67,000 arrests from Inauguration Day 2025 to Jan. 20, 2026, which is 197% more arrests than the same period previously.”
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Concluding her point on the crime crackdown and what it shows, Press Secretary Leavitt noted that crime is a choice, as we can simply choose not to allow a motley assortment of pro-crime judges, politicians, and law enforcement personnel engage in policies that put Americans last and criminals first.
She said, on that fantastic point, “It’s a choice to put violent criminals ahead of innocent Americans, a choice to force us all to live in fear because of soft on crime, liberal politicians, prosecutors and judges who lack the basic willingness to do their jobs and put dangerous people behind bars.”
Watch her here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video