THIS HIGHLIGHTS THE ISSUE OF REPUBLICANS PROMOTING LIES & THE
FAILURE OF "R" VOTERS ACROSSS THE NATION TO RESEARCH FACTS!
Trump (falsely) says crime is up in the US. Harris is
betting voters know better
John L. Micek
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, on Tuesday. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)AP
To hear former President Donald Trump tell it, America’s streets and communities are so riddled with crime and violence that you can’t step outside without taking your life in your hands.
As is so often the case, the facts are a bit more complicated and nuanced. But we’ll get into that in a moment.
First, let’s explore what Trump said during his nationally televised, 90-minute face-off with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night.
“All over the world, crime is down — all over the world except here,” Trump said as he responded to a question about immigration, arguing, without evidence, that other countries had sent criminals across the border in the thousands.
Scaring voters is a time-honored rite of American politics. And Trump rode a dystopian wave of grievance and fear into office in 2016.
It did not work in 2020 when Trump lost to President Joe Biden. But that has not stopped the Republican nominee from sticking to the same playbook this year.
On Tuesday, reverting to type, Trump remained defiant when ABC moderator David Muir asserted that FBI data show that crime is down. The former president claimed that was a “fraud,” again without offering evidence to the contrary.
And one group, according to Trump, largely are responsible: The migrants and asylum-seekers who are now living in communities across the nation, including Massachusetts.
“You see what’s happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio, you look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings,” Trump said.
“They’re going in violently. These are the people that [Harris] and Biden let into our country, and they’re destroying our country,” Trump continued, repeating a line of attack that’s a feature of his stump speeches. “They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out.”
There are a couple of problems with those claims.
First, they dehumanize migrants and asylum-seekers, most of whom are working and paying taxes, are living right next door to you, and often are fleeing the most desperate of conditions.
Also, the twin notions of being welcoming and securing the border need not be mutually exclusive, one Massachusetts lawmaker said this week.
“We’re a richer society, culturally and economically, because new people come here to build new lives and contribute,” U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, told WBUR’s “Radio Boston” program on Wednesday. “We welcome our new Bay Staters, and we want to make sure that they are successful here.”
“We also need, of course, [the] rule of law at the border and in the way that we process asylum claims,” the Newton Democrat said.
The second is that it’s untrue that migrants commit crimes at a greater rate than native-born Americans.
Decades of data show the opposite is true.
As a group, “immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for 150 years,” a cadre of researchers at Stanford and Northwestern universities and the National Bureau of Economic Research, wrote in a 2023 white paper.
Since 1960, immigrants today are “60% less likely to be incarcerated” than native-born whites, that same research concluded.
Separate research by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington D.C., found that illegal immigrants in Texas were 26% less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of homicide. The tally among legal immigrants was even higher — at 61%, the Cato researchers found.
But Trump’s crime claims point to broader perception problems when it comes to public safety. And it’s one of those issues, like the economy, where perception can, and often does — pardon the pun — trump reality.
In other words, if you think crime is out of control, or you think the economy is horrible, then you’re not going to be persuaded otherwise.
Like a lot of Americans, the former president is a voracious cable news consumer. And if all you do is watch TV news, then the chances are pretty good you also think it’s the Wild West out there.
About 70% of Americans get their crime news from local news outlets, according to data the Pew Research Center released last month.
Pew’s researchers found a “clear link” between the amount of local crime news that people consume and their sense of security.
“Americans who consume local crime news most often (regardless of the source) also are the most likely to say they are concerned about crime in their community affecting them or their family,” Pew’s researchers found.
The same research also found that 71% of Americans often got crime news from friends, family or their neighbors, creating a feedback loop of fear and paranoia.
And that’s true even if the data show that violent crime nationwide has decreased nationwide, and may be at a 50-year low, according to NPR.
This is not to say that we’re not without our challenges, either here in Massachusetts or elsewhere, as flare-ups in Springfield, Dorchester and Mattapan remind us.
Harris and her fellow Democrats are betting that voters want to turn the page on Trump’s “American Carnage” in 2024.
In a 50-50 country, it’s a tough sell. But it’s not impossible.
Read more analysis from John L. Micek
- As Mass. hospital chain collapses, their job is to help pick up the pieces | John L. Micek
- Warren v. Deaton: The two big things about Mass.’ U.S. Senate race | John L. Micek
- Mass. Primary 2024: A reminder that anything can happen in politics| John L. Micek
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