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Donald Trump backed out of an interview after a local paper asked him for data to back up his continued baseless claims that crime is on the rise under President Joe Biden.
The Detroit News reported that Trump’s campaign had agreed to an interview with the former president on Tuesday after a campaign speech. However, the campaign suddenly claimed Trump no longer had time for the interview after a reporter began probing them on crime data.
“The Trump campaign had initially agreed that Trump would participate in an interview with The Detroit News on Tuesday,” state politics reporter Craig Mauger wrote. “But after the newspaper began asking about the Michigan crime data before the event, a campaign aide said the presidential candidate no longer had time for an interview after the speech.”
At the Howell, Michigan campaign event, Trump claimed there is a “crime wave” going on at levels “nobody has ever seen before.”
“The amount of crime that we have is unbelievable,” Trump said, later labeling this perceived rise the “Kamala crime wave.”
Trump has made a similar claim countless times — including in April in the same state, when he claimed the crime rate is only going up.
As The Detroit News and other outlets have pointed out, national violent and property crime rates have fallen since Trump left office.
The Detroit News cited data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation which showed the national violent crime rate dropped in 2021 and 2022 under Biden.
The Trump campaign responded by claiming the data is “totally unreliable at the present time” because the FBI used “estimated crime numbers” for law enforcement agencies that didn’t report numbers, The Detroit News reports.
The murder rate also spiked by 30 percent during the last year of Trump’s presidency, the largest one-year rise on record, CNN reports.
“Trump’s implication that the crime rate is only going up is false,” Anna Harvey, a political science professor and director of the Public Safety Lab at New York University, told CNN earlier this year.
Trump has repeatedly spread a similar baseless claim that countries are sending people from mental health institutions and prisons to illegally enter the United States.
The Washington Post estimated that during his presidency, Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements.
The Independent has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
