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Trump bases his MAGA scaremongering on lies about crime in America

The Republican presidential candidate and his MAGA supporters must believe that America is terrible without them. Even if that belief is based on lies.

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As part of his week-long attempt to offer a counter-program to the Democratic National Convention, former President Donald Trump visited Michigan on Tuesday to accuse Vice President Kamala Harris of being too soft on crime.

Hold onto.

I understand that your first thought here might be, “Why would a convicted felon like Trump think he could prosecute a former prosecutor like Harris for criminality?”

And here's why: Trump has some statistics to show for it, and the mood among the population is such that crime is seen as a much bigger problem than it actually is. So let's first get some simple truths out there:

Crime rates in America have been steadily declining since the early 1990s, but saw a significant increase in 2020, Trump's final year in office, particularly in murders, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country. The decline in crime rates continued after he left office.

This is great for America, but not for Trump's incessant melodramatic claims that the country is a dystopian hellscape and that only if he returns to power can we live in peace and prosperity again.

That's nonsense. And for the following reason:

Trump and his campaign team find pieces of a larger crime puzzle

Trump claimed on Tuesday that Harris was “responsible for a 43 percent increase in violent crime” as vice president.

His campaign team later told me he was referring to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report that showed a 42% increase in nonfatal violent crime in 2022. That September report, now nearly a year old, also found that the specific crime rate had just hit “a 30-year low” during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.

It's no surprise that Trump left out this part of his speech.

Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania is gone. Vance's solution: Just don't believe it. No, really.

In America, crime statistics are collected in two ways: the FBI collects reports from local law enforcement agencies, while the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts surveys of a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 people each year.

Trump has really turned to the second method this week. Why? Because the first method, used by the FBI, refutes his lies that America is caught in a horrific, long-running crime wave.

FBI data shows that crime rates are declining in 2022. The agency's 2023 report is expected to be released in October of this year.

Of course, Trump then attacks the FBI for reporting factually on crimes

What do you do if you're Trump and a federal agency's data contradicts your claim? Of course you attack the agency.

Trump has repeatedly derided the FBI data as “fake numbers” because the agency changed the way it compiles those reports in 2021. That change was long planned but came in the middle of a pandemic, and some law enforcement agencies did not immediately switch to the new way of reporting to the FBI.

Will your vote count? Trump supporters are already working against the outcome of the 2024 election.

Ames Grawert, senior attorney at the Brennan Center For Justice, told me the FBI was “struggling with a data problem in 2021” and solved the problem by gathering information about its previous system And the new system for 2022 and 2023.

Grawert noted that the murder rate is a reliable data point in this discussion because, unlike other crimes, murder is “almost always reported.” And “murder is one of the fastest-declining crimes nationwide,” he said.

“We have very, very good reasons to believe that violent crime will decline very rapidly in 2023 and 2024, offsetting much, if not all, of the increase in violence that we saw in 2020,” Grawert told me. “And nothing President Trump said (in Michigan on Tuesday) really undermines that.”

The truth is that crime reporting is slower than political rhetoric

Trump is not letting facts distract from a horrific story. On Tuesday, he said the average American who buys a loaf of bread is at risk of being robbed, shot or raped.

Do you have a loaf of bread in your house right now? If so, did you have to make an arduous and dangerous journey to get it?

Trump is relying heavily on a common American perception that existed long before he entered politics. We tend to believe that the national crime rate is higher than the data shows, even if we don't consider crime to be a major threat in our immediate area.

Democrats are on the rise: Kamala Harris flexes her muscles in Milwaukee and Chicago as Trump's campaign falters

John Gramlich, deputy director of the Pew Research Center, told me that sentiment has long typically been stronger among Republicans, but has recently become more bipartisan, even as data shows crime rates are falling.

“Republicans are almost always more concerned about crime than Democrats or prioritize crime,” Gramlich said. “But what's interesting is that people in both parties have been more concerned about it since the Biden administration began.”

One factor may be contributing: Compiling crime data takes time. Politics is around us every day. Gramlich said a temporary “vacuum” of data could lead to “false perceptions filling the gap.”

“An election is about a very fluid discussion about what's happening right now,” he told me, and the time lag in data “can sometimes be full of misinformation or fear or a number of other things.”

Is grocery shopping safe for you?

That's why Trump was in Michigan this week, claiming that Harris would “bring crime, chaos, destruction and death” if elected president.

Until last month, he had a seemingly comfortable lead in the race, when Biden withdrew his candidacy for a second term and endorsed Harris.

Trump, now watching Harris gain momentum, launched a counter-program this week by predicting America's demise. The politician who always said, “Only I can fix it,” is at his wits' end and is now testing the rhetoric: “Only I can save America.”

Trump was president when crime rates skyrocketed in 2020. That doesn't mean he's responsible for it. He certainly wouldn't take responsibility for it (or anything else).

Now he's trying to sell Harris some statistics as she passes him in the presidential race. Think about that, and then ask yourself: Do you feel safe buying a loaf of bread in your community right now? If so, consider that people across America probably feel the same way.

Follow USA TODAY election columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

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