The Detroit News publication claims that Donald Trump pulled out of an interview after being confronted with crime data. Politics reporter Craig Mauger said Trump had agreed to sit down for an interview but abruptly canceled when the newspaper questioned his spokesperson about Michigan crime data.
The cancelation reportedly happened just days after the former President delivered a speech in the Wolverine State and claimed it had endured a “crime wave like nobody has ever seen before.” Mr. Trump labeled the apparent lawbreaking as the “Kamala crime wave” and said that in many big cities, residents could not “walk across the street to get a loaf of bread” without risking being shot, mugged, or raped.
Nevertheless, according to FBI figures, violent crime dropped during the Biden administration. Federal data states that there were 380 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2022, which was down from 398 in 2020.
When confronted with this information, a Trump campaign representative reportedly insisted that the FBI data is unreliable because it depends on estimates if various law enforcement agencies do not report their figures.
Nevertheless, in Michigan, where crime data is collated by the Michigan State Police, figures also show a drop in crime over the past couple of years. For instance, violent crime increased to 48,674 incidents per 100,000 residents between 2019 and 2020—representing a 12% increase from the previous year. During Biden’s first year in the White House, rates rose by around 1% to 49,073 but fell by 7% to 45,449 in 2022.
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that crime exploded across America during the Biden administration, but Democrats insist this is untrue and that crime was actually at unusually high levels when the former President was in the White House. They cite FBI data showing that murder rates dropped 20% between 2022 and 2023, while rape was down 16% and aggravated assault by 11%.
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responded to those figures in March and said the Biden administration is “trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes.” She controversially stated that Democrats had turned US cities into “cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”
