Violent crime plummeted around the country this year, but the legacy media refuse to acknowledge that it has anything to do with the return of President Donald Trump.
According to a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, over the past year, the murder rate dropped to its lowest level since 1900. Other crimes dropped across 11 of 13 categories in the report.
The study also noted that while FBI crime statistics won’t become available until later this year, there is a strong possibility that 2025 could mark “the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.”
While crime was beginning to fall in 2024, the drop occurred most dramatically in the past year. Interesting timing, right?
As most Americans outside the newsrooms of our most elite legacy media publications almost certainly know, crime spiked dramatically in 2020 immediately following the George Floyd riots. This coincided with a nationwide push by the Left to obliterate traditional policing in the name of anti-racism and social justice.
To the shock of nobody with common sense, crime immediately spiked and stayed high for years until it finally began slowing down. Now it’s going down faster than ever before.
That’s amazing and well worth celebrating. But don’t think that the media is going to give any credit to the Trump administration.
This line from a New York Times piece on the crime drop sums up so much about the state of politics in recent years.
“Experts said there is little to justify any claim that President Trump is responsible for last year’s drop in crime.”
Oh, those experts, they’re just so measured, nonpartisan, and correct about everything, right?
FBI Director Kash Patel noted that while many outlets reported on the sudden crime collapse, they twisted themselves in pretzels to avoid giving a shred of credit to Trump and the policies of his administration.
“Axios just reported the lowest murder rate since 1900, down 20% from 2024, and somehow forgot to mention President Trump or the historic results of this FBI,” Patel wrote on X. “Nearly 200% more arrests. Violent gangs crushed. Fugitives hunted down. Media gymnastics can’t hide the reality that this administration brought law and order back, and Americans are safer because of it.”
Dan Bongino, who just left the FBI, was even harsher on the media.
“Axios is simply incapable of giving this President, and his administration, any credit for this incredible headline about violent crime. They’re propaganda pieces for the ‘defund the police’ democrats, nothing more,” he posted on X.
Bongino wrote that the FBI made some significant changes to policing, “including clarifying UFAP (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution) warrant policies, we refocused personnel to investigate gang and VICAR (Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering) crimes, and we doubled down on using the Hobbs Act for organized robbery gangs. This led to dramatically enhanced cooperation with local law enforcement partners and a historic number of arrests.”
There’s no question that Trump made crime-stopping a huge part of his rhetoric and policies. He sent the National Guard to cities like Washington, plagued by an unacceptable amount of violent crime for years, and prioritized immigration law enforcement. Those may not have been the only reasons crime dropped, but you can bet that if in an alternate moral universe where defunding the police preceded a huge crime drop, you can bet that the media would be rushing to give Democrats the credit.
That’s just how things work.
In many ways, this crime spike, then dip, follows the pattern of the so-called Ferguson or Minneapolis Effect. This trend was first widely noted following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The media portrayed the shooting as police malfeasance, that they shot Brown in cold blood while he was trying to surrender to the police. That narrative was bunk, but it sparked backlash, riots, and a retreat from proactive policing by many departments. In the wake of this incident, crime surged, though eventually petered out as departments returned to proactive policing.
That cycle was repeated to an even greater extent post-George Floyd, when the media was in the full swing of the Great Awokening and cities insanely decided it was a good time to “defund the police.”
The result was one of the most acute crime surges in American history. The story the corporate media told was generally that this was all just a result of COVID-19, but many countries experienced a sharp drop in crime as it surged in the U.S.
Now that the delusional moment has passed somewhat, some cities have come back to reason, and we have a federal administration committed to law and order. It’s easy to see why crime is coming back down.
But as good as this all is, we should all still be wary. As much as crime has dropped in aggregate, it’s still unacceptably high. In many cities, there is still a huge problem with repeat offenders committing crime after crime and getting away with lenient sentences.
New York City appears to be throwing away the lessons of the last few years because it wishes to give true socialism another shot.
So be thankful for the good news, but wary of how quickly crime can again spiral out of control.
Originally published at The Daily Signal.
Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. He is also the author of the book The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.
