President Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Sept. 2, “CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!” That’s not the case, experts told us, and Chicago’s overall homicide rate declined more than 30% in the first six months of this year as compared with last year.
While signing executive orders at the White House on Aug. 25, President Donald Trump wrongly said that an 11-day span of no homicides in Washington, D.C., was the “first time that’s taken place in years,” a claim reiterated by other members of the administration who credited Trump’s federal takeover of the district’s law enforcement.
President Donald Trump inaccurately claimed that the murder rate in Washington, D.C., “reached the highest rate probably ever” in 2023, and he ignored a decline in murders since then to justify a federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement.
President Donald Trump recently boasted that the nation’s murder rate has “plummeted by 28%” since he took office. Data supplied by local police departments do show the nation’s murder rate is dropping, as it has been for several years. Notably, Trump now seems comfortable with crime data that he criticized repeatedly during the campaign as “fake news.”
In his first post-election, sit-down broadcast interview, President-elect Donald Trump outlined his priorities for a second term. But in the interview, Trump continued to repeat inaccurate information related to immigration, crime, trade, health care and the election.
Crime statistics compiled by the FBI and other sources show an increase in violent crime, notably murders, in 2020 and a decline since. A revision to the FBI data this year doesn’t change that overall trend, despite claims made on social media and by the Trump campaign to the contrary.
Our latest quarterly report on various statistical indicators comes less than three weeks before Election Day.
Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, circulated a baseless rumor on social media that the residents of Springfield, Ohio, “have had their pets abducted and eaten by” immigrants. Now, Vance has cherry-picked data to make the unfounded claim that immigrants are responsible for an 81% increase in the city’s murders.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted his party’s vice presidential nomination, and repeated claims he has made before about the Republican ticket. Other speakers tried to link former President Donald Trump to Project 2025, among other claims.
In a campaign rally in Atlanta and other venues, former President Donald Trump has tried to paint Vice President Kamala Harris, a former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, as being soft on crime. Several of his claims go beyond the facts or distort her positions.