It’s an election year, and so “crime” is being hyped by Republicans, but on Fox News viewers heard something that probably surprised them: “The largest increase in the murder rate in this country occurred in the last year of the Trump administration. That hasn’t happened in any of the Biden years.
Look here:
Waling: Listen, the highest increase in the homicide rate in this country occurred in the last year of the Trump administration. It didn’t happen in any of the Biden years.. pic.twitter.com/j7rXVuwsH7
— Acino (@Acino) April 3, 2024
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“Listen, the president invited all the major police chiefs to the White House just last month. Violent crime is widespread, declining in most large cities. And it’s something we need to talk about, certainly as Democrats. The biggest jump in the homicide rate, the homicide rate in this country, on an annual basis, occurred in the last year of the Trump administration. It hasn’t happened in any of the Biden years in the last three years.
So, once again, the president is living up to his record. Even Donald Trump now finds himself in a different situation compared to 2016 and has a record to defend.”
It’s true that Trump is not in the same situation as he was in 2016, when “giving him a chance” was a talking point. Now, Trump has a record to defend.
President Biden had a meeting with police chiefs from major cities in February, during which they celebrated the sharp decline in crime rates across the country.
Biden has pointed to the American Rescue Plan, supported only with Democratic votes, as an important aid for cities during the pandemic. I would also like to point out that this included a change in policing to include more mental health and youth intervention programs. Republicans like to point to Chicago and Detroit as examples of high-crime cities, so it’s notable that Detroit saw an 18% drop in homicides in 2023, while Chicago saw a 13% drop in homicides.
“Last year, the United States had one of the lowest rates of all violent crime in more than 50 years,” the Democratic president told law enforcement officials at that meeting.
Separately, in 2021, Biden’s Justice Department established a violent crime reduction strategy. These are deliberate policies that Biden has put in place and can therefore take credit for.
In 2023, Reuters reported: “Violent crime including murder and rape fell in the United States in 2022 compared to the previous year, but property crime increased during the same period… Although violent crime has a downward trend On the downside, the 21,156 homicides reported in 2022 are also well above pre-pandemic levels, according to FBI data. The number of reported annual homicides never exceeded 18,000 during the 2010s, but jumped to 21,570 in 2020.”
So the high of 21,570 murders occurred in Trump’s last year as president, which was also the first year of the pandemic. The numbers have since declined, with a 12% drop in homicides from 2022 to 2023.
Is it fair to blame the pandemic numbers on Trump? The fair doesn’t play an important role in politics, but the truth is that we don’t know how those numbers might have changed under a different administration, one that had handled the pandemic competently from the beginning. Trump simply tried to find a way out of the pandemic and by the time they realized it was real and it was a problem, it was too late.
So while it’s not entirely fair to attribute the high murder rate to Trump, it is also clear that his handling of the pandemic has been disastrous for the country and no doubt this has had an impact on murder rates.
Violent crime has largely been declining for decades, since the first term of President Bill Clinton’s administration, with a 2020 pandemic or Trump’s bump.
Historically, Americans trust Republicans more when it comes to crime, which makes this clip even more interesting and raises the question: If legislation passed only by Democrats has helped major cities reduce homicide rates, is it fair to continue to believe that Republicans are “better” at violent crime? compared to the Democrats?
Perhaps the real problem is racist dog whistles communicated to the Republican base rather than facts, which may explain why this Fox panel immediately turned to “cartels” transporting drugs across the border after being confronted with facts they questioned their prejudices and beliefs. Yes, they focused on the border, which Republicans have refused to adequately fund in an effort to hurt President Biden politically.
No matter how fair or unfair it is, Donald Trump must defend his record just like any other politician and should be held accountable for his failures as well as any successes he might have had.
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