The “crime crisis” narrative Fox News concocted for Donald Trump was exposed at Tuesday night’s debate when moderator David Muir pointed out that FBI data shows violent crime has actually fallen dramatically in recent years. The network’s stars are responding by lashing out at Muir, falsely claiming violent crime is actually up, and arguing that even if data show violent crime is plummeting, “we're all a little bit more scared than we used to be.”

Trump, in a nonresponsive answer to a question about how he would carry out his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, claimed that due to migration under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, “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.”

Trump’s assertion of rising crime echoed months of anecdote-based Fox coverage — but Muir pointed out in response that actual data shows the opposite, saying, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”

Indeed, preliminary FBI data released in June found “steep drops in every category of violent crime in every region in the first three months of 2024 compared to a year earlier, continuing a downward trend since a coronavirus pandemic surge” during Trump’s administration. 

Trump responded to Muir by echoing baseless right-wing media claims that the FBI had been “defrauding” data. But the agency’s report is consistent with other sources showing that crime is falling.

The co-hosts of Fox & Friends responded the next morning by arguing that data that shows violent crime has fallen is irrelevant in the face of the vibes.

“Any time people say violent crime is down in America,” offered Brian Kilmeade, “I ask you, people of Philadelphia, where they are hosting, find anyone in Philadelphia who thinks violent crime is down. I ask you, people of Chicago, site of the DNC, walk around and tell us how crime is under control. I ask you in Washington, D.C., where violent crime is down, the carjacking capital of the country, ask anyone in Washington, D.C., if they feel safer today than four years ago. There is the numbers and there is the reality.”

“It’s the word ‘violent,’ however they define ‘violent.’ Crime is up,” responded Ainsley Earhardt. 

“Kamala Harris didn’t even make that point — it was the moderators,” Lawrence Jones added. “They’re not there covering these stories. They’re not going to all these major cities talking about the violence that is impacting urban America on the day to days, so they probably believe what the FBI numbers are saying.”

In fact, according to data compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, all three cities Kilmeade mentioned have seen steep declines in homicides and at least one other category of violent crime the group reported (rapes, robberies, and/or aggravated assaults).

The trio returned to the subject later in the program.

“One of my favorite parts of the debate, and when it just became clear to me that the bias was jumping off the screen at one point, was the conversation about crime,” Jones complained. “And then David hops in and says, ‘Well, actually, the FBI is saying that the crime is going down.’”

“OK, well now, we know those numbers aren’t quite accurate,” he continued, echoing Trump’s false claim from the debate. Jones then urged Muir to spend more time focusing his broadcast on crime anecdotes, saying, “David, you have a newscast every single day. You may not report on it, but you have local affiliates in major cities all across this country. They are reporting on the crime in Chicago, in Philadelphia. Why not pick up the phone and call them and see what’s going on on the ground?”

“I think, Lawrence, the operative word there was ‘violent,’ and David said, ‘Violent crime has gone down,’” Earhardt replied. “We know that crime is up in these cities, we know that thousands, millions of more illegal immigrants have come over our border under this administration, many of them are affiliated with gangs. We know that more of them have murdered more little girls or young women than ever in my lifetime.” (Earhardt was alive in the 1990s, when violent crime and homicides peaked at levels dramatically higher than the present.)

“So violent crime might be going down,” she continued, “but crime overall, we're all a little bit more scared than we used to be."

“Ask anybody in the streets of Philadelphia, outside where that debate was taking place, if they think crime is going down,” Kilmeade added. “In New York City, you walk the streets here, I don't care what the bar chart or the pie chart says, it’s not going down.”