The Pravda Press "Fact Checks" President Trump On D.C. Crime Statistics
/Our nations’s capital, Washington, D.C., has a violent crime problem that is, objectively, very serious. Indeed, considering that Washington is the capital of the wealthiest and most important country in the world, its level of violent crime is quite shocking.
And thus a few days ago (August 11), the President decided to address the problem by federalizing law enforcement in the District of Columbia, at least for some period of time. Trump accompanied his action with a press conference and a series of news releases: “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares a Crime Emergency to Restore Safety in the District of Columbia”; “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Law and Order in the District of Columbia”; and “RESTORING LAW AND ORDER IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.”
Both orally at the press conference, and in the written news releases, Trump cited various crime statistics from the District to illustrate the seriousness of the problem. Among Trump’s oral statements was this one, quoted in the New York Times on August 11:
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Mr. Trump said. “And we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”
Here are some examples from the first of the three news releases linked above:
The surge in violent crime in our Nation’s capital is a national disgrace that threatens public safety and Federal operations, to the detriment of all Americans.
Washington, D.C. has one of the highest robbery and murder rates among large U.S. cities nationwide, with a homicide rate exceeding 27 per 100,000 residents in 2024.
Vehicle theft in the District is over three times the national average, at 842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents, ranking it among the most dangerous cities globally.
Now, our Pravda press is not about to allow President Trump to get away with a take down of the most dominantly Democratic city in the country without a strong response. So, call in the fact checkers!
The problem here is that D.C.’s violent crime problem truly is horrific. There is no way really to defend the D.C. local government’s record for law enforcement. And thus we have some of the most humorous examples of the “fact checking” art that I have seen recently — nit-picking the usual Trump exaggerations as a way of diverting attention from the truly bad crime situation in Washington.
It seems that the urge to push back against this Trump initiative was almost irresistible for the Democratic press, such that I find articles taking on Trump’s assertions literally everywhere, from the New York Times to PolitiFact, to PBS, to NBC, to CNN, to Axios, to HuffPost, to the Washington Post, and on and on. But they all seem to take their talking points from this New York Times piece from August 12, so I will use that one as the source of quotes. The headline is “Trump Misstates Washington Crime Data to Justify Takeover.” The sub-headline is “The president cited a number of false and misleading claims about homicides and youth crime in the nation’s capital.”
So OK New York Times, what are the statements that you claim are “false and misleading”? Here’s the first one that sets the tone for the article:
WHAT WAS SAID
“Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever. They say 25 years, but they don’t know what that means because it just goes back 25 years.”
— Mr. Trump in the news conference on Monday
False. There were 274 homicides in Washington in 2023 among a population of about 679,000 people, a rate of about 40.4 per 100,000 people. That was the highest rate in over 20 years, but not “ever.” Moreover, the homicide rate has since declined. The number of homicides declined by about a third in 2024 to 187 while the population grew to over 702,000 people, for a rate of 26.6 per 100,000.
So the “falsity” is that there were still higher rates of murders in D.C. more than 25 years ago, and that the rate has declined from 40.4 per 100,000 in 2023 to only 26.6 in 2024. Neither of those goes to the heart of the assertion, which is that the rate — whether 40.4 or 26.6 — is unacceptably high. Shouldn’t there be some recognition that 40.4, and even 26.6, are quite extraordinarily high murder rates for a major capital city? For comparison, in New York City, there were 377 murders in 2024 in a population of 8.4 million, for a rate of 4.5 per 100,000, less than one-sixth the rate in Washington. In places like London, Paris and Berlin, the murder rates are more like 1 to 1.5 per 100,000.
And then we get to the humorous part. Apparently Trump put up a chart of various third-world capital cities, showing murder rates well below that of Washington: for example, Lima 7/100K; Havana 4/100K: Nairobi 5/100K; Brasilia 13/100K; Mexico City 8/100K. He then said that Washington’s rate was “No.1 that we can find anywhere in the world.” The Times has really got him on that one:
[Washington’s murder] rate is nowhere near the highest “anywhere in the world.” In 2023, according to data compiled by the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank, capitals with higher homicide rates included Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with a rate of 67.2 per 100,000 people; Cape Town, South Africa, with 66.8; Kingston, Jamaica, with 64.2; Caracas, Venezuela, with 47.9; and Guatemala City at 47.8.
Did you have any idea that Washington’s murder rate was that close to the rates of true hell-holes like Port-au-Prince and Caracas?
And how about in the United States?
Overall, the think tank reported, 47 cities with more than 250,000 people had higher homicide rates than 40.4 . . . including six in the United States: Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit.
Surprise — it’s a list of six of the worst-governed cities in the United States, all of them having had uninterrupted rule by Democrats for decades.
I can’t help thinking that Trump intentionally threw in some exaggerations in order to bait the entire liberal press corps into defending the indefensible of Washington’s violent crime situation.