Should a president have full immunity?
As the Supreme Court weighs whether Trump has presidential immunity, passers-by outside shared their opinions about the former president’s case.
Jeff Asher is a New Orleans-based crime data analyst who has worked at the CIA and Department of Defense. He leans towards caution when describing trends in his line of work.
Amid the heated crime rhetoric that is a staple of politics and is continuing this year – former President Donald Trump and his conservative allies in Congress and the media are using dire terms to describe crime trends in America – Asher has been carefully sifting through the data.
The story he tells has been slow to emerge but stands in stark contrast to Trump’s narrative.
As early data showed murders declining nationwide last year, Asher was careful about overstating things. But as the big decline continued, he wrote in December that he had “seen enough” and was ready to declare that the U.S. was experiencing a major drop in killings.
“Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded,” Asher wrote online.
The decrease in murders is “potentially historically large,” Asher told USA TODAY, and it’s not just killings that are declining. Preliminary 2023 FBI data “paint the picture” of a big decrease in overall crime, he wrote.
That’s not the picture Trump and his supporters are painting on the campaign trail, with voters likely to hear plenty more in the coming months that attempts to cast President Joe Biden as weak on crime. A House Judiciary Committee field hearing scheduled for Friday in Philadelphia is expected to focus on the topic, picking up on a theme the GOP-led panel covered during similar sessions last year in New York and Chicago.
Trump’s crime rhetoric has been escalating as he faces his own criminal jeopardy, with the former president arguing that prosecutors are ignoring the real crime problem in America to pursue a political “witch hunt” against him.
He complained last summer about the “filth and the decay” in Washington, D.C. as he headed back to the nation’s capital for his arraignment on federal criminal charges tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Campaigning in Georgia last month, where he’s fighting additional state-based criminal charges, Trump declared that “crime is rampant and out of control like never, ever before.”
Yet even as the data contradicts Trump’s description of a nation in the grip of terrible crime wave, many Americans are inclined to agree with him, polls show, and crime could be a key issue this election cycle.
Trump is making public safety concerns, particularly crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign. His message is targeted at swing voters who might have qualms about Trump and GOP policies on issues such as abortion but could find a tough-on-crime pitch appealing.
“The suburban housewives actually like Donald Trump. You know why? Because I’m the one who’s gonna keep them safe,” Trump said recently, referencing a voting block that could swing the election.
The Trump campaign referred questions about Trump’s rhetoric conflicting with FBI data to the Republican National Committee, which pointed to articles raising questions about the accuracy of the FBI data and conflicting information in federal reports.
RNC spokeswoman Anna Kelly said USA TODAY was “trying to gaslight Americans into believing that their lived experiences are wrong” and noted “families are rightfully concerned” about crime.
“Biden’s weakness has made Americans less safe, and his policies have failed,” Kelly added.
Aggressive crime rhetoric has been a staple of GOP politics going back decades, but Trump’s comments clash with the reality laid out in FBI and other reports of a nation mending after a troubled period.
Pandemic crime wave
Republicans also ran on tackling crime during the 2022 midterm election cycle, and they had data…
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