The Homicide Rate Spiked While Trump Occupied The White House— It Went Down Since Then
Joel McNally, writing for Milwaukee’s weekly paper, the Shepherd Express offered an explanation to the simple proposition: Why Trump Hates Milwaukee and Other American Cities. That’s right; it’s not just Milwaukee. And it has nothing to do with crime— except his inability to get away with his life of crime in big cities.
Before we look at McNally’s explanation, let me just remind you that the GOP has long trucked in crime scare tactics as part of their electoral appeal to elderly voters. And, as Judd Legum pointed out a few days ago, Trump and his MAGAts are taking that strategy to new lows, aggressively— and deceitfully— insisting that “violent crime in the United States is out of control. In a speech earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said that under Biden, the United States is “plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime.” When the RNC— Trump’s daughter-in-law— claims that crime is spiking, they’re talking about places like Milwaukee. And Trump doesn’t even try being subtle about it. Big surprise: convicted felon lies about crime!
“In a speech in Nevada on Sunday,” wrote Legum, “Trump said that Venezuela ‘took all of their criminals, and they dumped them into a place called the United States of America.’ Trump claimed that soon, America would be more dangerous than Venezuela “unless you make me President, in which case, we'll be very safe.”
According to a recent poll by The Economist, 63% of American voters say crime is a very important issue. (Another 28% say it is a somewhat important issue.) Criticisms by Trump and other Republicans appear to be breaking through. Only 33% of Americans approve of Biden's handling of crime, and 52% disapprove.
But while Trump's rhetoric on crime might be effective, it is not true.
New data released this week by the FBI reveals that both violent crime and property crime have dropped precipitously this year. The data, which is subject to revision, compares crime in the first quarter of 2024 with crime in the first quarter of 2023. It shows substantial drops in every category, including murder (-26.4%), rape (-25.7%), robbery (-17.8%), and property crime (-15.1%).
The only recent spikes in violent crime, namely murder rates, were when Trump was president but, wrote Legum, “Many Americans have misconceptions about crime trends. A Gallup poll last November found "77% [of Americans] believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago… The FBI data is consistent with data from cities which shows murder in 2024 is down 18.3% compared to the same period last year. Many large cities are experiencing even sharper declines, including Baltimore (-41%), Philadelphia (-41%), San Francisco (-36%), Phoenix (-29%), Detroit (-25%), and Washington, DC (-24%).”
Confronted with the statistics, Trump just insists they’re fake news.
Now, back to Trump’s hatred for Milwaukee, which he condemned as “a horrible city”— and urban America in general. What did Milwaukee do to rise to the top of the world’s longest hate list by any defeated American president in history? It’s what Milwaukeeans and 81 million other Americans have never done. They have never once regretted turning out in record numbers to rid the nation of Trump’s hateful, anti-American presidency. It’s absurd for Trump to even try to lie about calling Milwaukee horrible when so many Republicans tattled to the media. From the moment descended on his Golden Escalator to run for president, Trump has been explicit about what he hates most about every major city in America. Those cities are filled with the Americans Trump and his strongest supporters hate the most— liberal Democrats and Black and Brown Americans. Their civil rights movement destroyed what were once the traditional values of a majority of White Americans.”
Trump was not only far more crude and explicit about his racism than most politicians, but openly appealed to the violent, armed racists who practiced in the woods for an American race war. They led the violent insurrectionists Trump called to Washington to attack Congress. Like Trump, hundreds of them are now convicted felons. Trump calls them political hostages and promises to pardon most of them if he’s reelected.
Needless to say, Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters are not the mainstream voters that legitimate American political parties usually depend upon to win presidential elections.
That’s why it’s always been nonsensical for news organizations to pretend Milwaukee’s Republican convention was ever going to be anything but bizarre even before the party’s presidential nominee insulted everybody in town.
No major political party in history has ever nominated a presidential candidate before who has been convicted of 34 felonies for vote fraud to deceive American voters about paying off a porn star to cover up his sleazy personal life to win a presidential election. Then add the twist that Republicans were once a conservative law and order party and the felonious former president they’re nominating again is awaiting trial for 54 more felonies including the most violent criminal assault on our democracy in history we all watched on television and stealing top-secret government documents about our nuclear weapons and hiding them in his bathroom.
Here’s the part Trumped-up Republicans don’t appear to realize yet. It’s not just the diverse voters living in big cities who believe no one should be above the law in our democracy regardless of their wealth or political power. White voters living in small towns and rural areas believe that too. One of their biggest complaints is big guys getting away with everything.
This is where Republican attempts to roll back equal rights in America not just to the pre-civil rights era, but all the way to the 1800s is coming back to bite them. Trump has never had any power to overturn his convictions for felonies in state courts.
Four days before Milwaukee’s Republican convention, Justice Juan Merchan will sentence Trump for his multiple felony convictions in New York. The media assume he’ll receive probation as a first offender, but that’s a laughable description of Trump. He was repeatedly cited for contempt of court for attacking witnesses, jurors, the judge, the prosecutor and their families.
More state prosecutions are coming in Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada for the Trump campaign’s loony attempt to submit counterfeit documents of fake Trump electors claiming he won those states instead of Biden. He didn’t.
…Trump has had it with all that diversity, equality and inclusion that Biden and the liberal Democrats who control horrible cities like Milwaukee want to impose on America. Trump has his own ideas about how democracy could go back to the way it used to be.
