The Biden-Harris administration, the Harris-Walz campaign, and their allies in the media are boasting of the FBI‘s most recent report demonstrating a decline in violent crime, but a CNN panel struggled making sense of it.
Mediaite reports:
The FBI released new crime data on Monday, showing that violent crime decreased by 3% in 2023 compared to the prior year. Violent crimes like murder, rape, assaults, and hate crimes decreased in 2023 while vehicle theft rose by more than 12% for the year.
The CNN panel contended that although they believed the FBI’s reports, it didn’t reflect or reconcile with their day-to-day experiences.
Karen Finney said, “I think it is important to talk about the declines in violent crime. The challenge though, I think on the issue is, whereas those statistics are correct, in our daily lives, we’re still like, I hear in D.C., we‘ve got carjackings. We’ve got people getting mugged and then middle of the day.”
Axios correspondent Alex Thompson suggested, “Well, and the statistics did show that carjackings were one of the types of crime that did go up in 2023. The other thing, I think the reason why the feeling is because you saw a huge spike during Covid. And the fact is that we’ve seen a steady decline, but now crime is only about back to where it was in 2019, which is why I think that the vibes, the feeling is because we have this spike because of the pandemic.”
Readers should note that spike in crime in 2020 took off in the summer, following the publicized death of George Floyd, and not March of 2020, when nationwide lockdowns began. Both Harris and Walz aided and abetted rioters in Minnesota by raising money to bail them out and delaying the National Guard.
The discussion continued.
“And, Jonah, it matters not just what’s going on in your own community and what you personally experience, but also what you read about, what you’re consuming via news media or on TikTok on your phone and there is — I mean, car jackings are one that, I mean, I get warnings not to rent certain classes of cars because they get stolen all the time.”
Kamala Harris released a statement on the official White House website, boasting of the report and crediting her leadership for the decline in crime.
She wrote, “Today’s new data submitted to the FBI confirms that our dedicated efforts and collaborative partnerships with law enforcement are working; Americans are safer now than when we took office. Last year, we saw the largest ever one-year decrease in the homicide rate, which now stands 16 percent below its 2020 level. Violent crime is at a near 50-year low. Our progress is continuing this year and builds on substantial decreases during the previous years of our administration.”
One panelist warned against this, insisting it was a battle she could not win.
Republican strategist Brad Todd earlier argued Harris would be wise to avoid crime becoming a central issue to her campaign. CNN political commentatorJonah Goldberg also pointed to Covid as the thing that “upset the apple cart” and argued it changed how crime was dealt with by police on a daily basis and things still haven’t evened out.
Todd explained, “I think this is a very dangerous thing for Harris to talk about. She has a philosophical disconnect with the center of the electorate on it. She said we needed to reduce incarceration. She said we need to stop thinking that putting more police and the street makes us safe. I don‘t think she wants October to be about crime.”
The FBI has been accused of faulty reporting and “cooking the books” by the Washington Examiner after an investigation revealed over half the country doesn’t share their crime statistics with the FBI and the bureau offers based on “estimations” rather than hard data. The Washington Examiner found that contrary to the FBI’s conclusions, murders were actually up by 23% across 70 major cities. They also revealed that while the FBI reported a 13% drop in robberies in Milwaukee, their actual police department reported a 7% increase.
