Trump Distorts Violent Crime Statistics in Ordering Takeover and Troops to D.C.

President Donald Trump inaccurately claimed that the murder rate in Washington, D.C., “reached the highest rate probably ever” in 2023, and he ignored a decline in murders since then to justify a federal takeover of the city’s law enforcement.

In declaring a “crime emergency” in Washington, Trump wrongly claimed at an Aug. 11 press conference, “Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever. They say 25 years, but they don’t know what that means because it just goes back 25 years.”

Trump signed an executive order to take federal control of the Metropolitan Police Department for at least 30 days and issued a memo to deploy District of Columbia National Guard troops.

The city’s murder rate did increase in 2023 to the highest rate in 20 years, but it wasn’t the highest ever. And murders have decreased since.