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.