“Crime is actually down- but the GOP is brainwashing its base”; Fayette County News; 6-25-24

Crime is actually down- but the GOP is brainwashing its base

“Cities are also facing staggering surges in violent crime”- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (1-25-24)

The GOP has truly become the ReTrumpican Party. Trump loves to rile up the party base. He has no problem creating “alternate facts” (i.e., untruths). For example, his recent false statements on crime going up due to Biden and the Democrats. 

Even worse, he seems to have infected the entire party establishment, who are now echoing his opinions while ignoring facts. For example, in the first quarter of 2024 versus 2023… as Senator McConnell was lecturing the Senate about horrible rising violence in cities… metropolitan areas actually experienced a dramatic drop of 20% in violent crime(https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/quarterly ). Murders decreased 26% from the year before.

And crime was not just down in that quarter; it fell on a yearly basis. In 2020, the last year of the Trump term, violent crimes were 385/100,000. In 2022 under Biden, they had gone down to 370/100,000 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/).

However, despite the FBI statistics, a recent Gallup poll proved that Trump and his minions have been successful in selling the public on the GOP’s “alternate facts”.  At the end of 2023, 63% of Americans thought crime was a serious issue in America, versus 60% in 2020 under Trump. The situation is even more dramatic when respondents were asked about their own neighborhoods. 17% were concerned that crime was serious/extremely serious in 2023 versus only 10% in 2020 (https://news.gallup.com/poll/544442/americans-crime-problem-serious.aspx).

I believe that the rise of social versus print media is one reason that Americans are being more easily duped. A recent report (6-17-24) shows that social media is now the leading news source for Americans, replacing TV and print media (https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/united-states ). 

In 2024, 72% of Americans got their news on-line (48% from social media), whereas only 16% got their news from print sources. Concurrently, the news industry terminated 2,700 jobs last year and “2.5 local newspapers closed every week”.

Another 51% got their news from TV. But with the emergence of heavy-handed TV “advocacy pseudo-journalism”, TV journalism is not what it was when Walter Cronkite ruled the airways. 

Both the left and the right are biased. However, it is clear to me that the problem is much worse on right wing outlets like Fox where there is virtually no objective news versus simply opinions. Nearly everything is presented from a pro-Trump viewpoint. And rising networks OAN and Newsmax are even more biased.

Evidently, I am not the only one who has this point of view. An equal number of Americans have a negative and positive view of the Fox network (43% each). Only 32% mistrust MSNBC. 

However, 43% support for Fox is still a significant figure. My friends who watch Fox will not entertain any point of view. They get news only from this network and right-wing newsletters…which have even less respect for facts. These newsletters run highly inflammatory headlines. If the reader takes time to read the whole story, the details may be quite different from the headlines. But many conservatives will not do that, simply skimming the headlines and moving on. Which leads us back to Trump.

Trump is now a convicted felon, the only felon former President ever in the history of our nation. He has also been indicted in- a. a federal election interference case; b. a Georgia election interference case and c. the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

It is very likely that he would be convicted of even more crimes if his other trials were concluded before the election. Primarily due to politics, they will not be. Americans who are concerned about crime should consider Trump’s own alleged crimes when voting in November.