In announcing the latest FBI annual report on nationwide crime, President Donald Trump wrongly cast the decline in crime in 2025 as a dramatic turnaround and made misleading claims about the impact of his administration’s policies.
Speaking to an audience of law enforcement officers at the Nassau County police academy on Aug. 14, Trump said that his speech was meant to “celebrate the historic progress our administration is making together with law enforcement partners nationwide to restore law and order in America.” The FBI that day released data collected from local law enforcement agencies showing that both violent and property crime nationwide declined from 2024 to 2025, with the largest one-year drops in the violent crime and murder rates since the FBI began publishing these estimates in 1936.
The president accurately cited those large one-year reductions, but he ran afoul of the facts and available evidence in taking credit for them:
- Trump claimed that the decline happened “because of what the federal government’s doing.” Criminology experts say there are many plausible factors and the exact reasons are unclear.
- He claimed that the U.S. experienced “a horrible four years” of violent crime during the Biden administration. But violent crime fell during the second half of Biden’s presidency and was lower in the last year of Joe Biden’s term compared with Trump’s final year in office.
- Trump vastly overstated the decline in crime since his deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., Memphis and New Orleans, citing 70% or 80% reductions that don’t match up with police data. Experts also say the troops aren’t the primary reason for crime dropping in those cities.
- The president suggested that an executive order he signed upon taking office in 2025 contributed to a significant decline in police officers dying in the line of duty that year. However, the law enforcement organization that keeps records of such deaths said the decrease was “likely” due to other factors.
Trump’s speech embracing the FBI’s report for 2025 is noteworthy because he previously disparaged the FBI reports as “fake,” “phony,” and “a fraud” when they showed a decline in crime under Biden.
