The sparks flew on CNN’s “NewsNight with Abby Phillip” when conservative radio host Ben Ferguson credited Donald Trump with driving down violent crime nationwide — a claim that landed just hours after the president ordered the National Guard into Washington, D.C., and placed the city’s police force under direct federal control.
Trump framed the move as a response to “rising violence” in the nation’s capital, but federal data shows crime there is actually falling, igniting a political firestorm over whether the president is manufacturing a crisis to justify flexing his extraordinary powers.
The exchange became the flashpoint of the night as Abby Phillip challenged Ferguson to back up his claim. “I agree, and a lot of it is the leadership of Trump,” Ferguson said, cutting into Phillip’s explanation that the national decline began before the president returned to office.
“What evidence do you have that it was Donald Trump?” Phillip pressed, citing federal data showing crime rates hit a 30-year low in 2024 after spiking in 2023.
Ferguson insisted Trump had emboldened law enforcement through campaign rhetoric, inadvertently admitting that the president had given police the green light to act with greater force and impunity.
Phillip shot back, “Don’t let facts get in the way of political talking points.”
The on-air clash came as Trump’s unprecedented move to seize control of D.C. policing dominated headlines, with critics pointing out that his rationale — “rising violence” — runs counter to the city’s own crime data.
Violent crime in Washington surged in 2023, hitting its highest homicide count since the late 1990s and nearly doubling carjackings from the year before. But those numbers have been falling sharply ever since. Homicides dropped 32 percent in 2024 and another 12 percent so far in 2025, with carjackings also cut by more than half since their 2023 peak. Crime analyst Jeff Asher says the city’s violent crime rate is now as low as it’s been since the 1960s.
National numbers tell the same story. FBI data shows violent crime fell 4.5 percent in 2024, with murders down nearly 15 percent, robberies down 8.9 percent, and aggravated assaults down 3 percent. Property crimes fell even more steeply, including an 18.6 percent drop in motor vehicle thefts. A mid-year 2025 report from the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice found continued declines in most major offenses across 42 U.S. cities, including double-digit drops in homicide, robbery, and carjacking.
Critics accused Trump of using outdated 2023 crime figures as a political pretext to crack down on cities with Black mayors who resist his immigration policies. They note that while Washington’s crime rate remains higher than the national average, its recent improvements mirror declines in other historically high-crime cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit.
Trump also told reporters that 2023 saw the capital’s highest murder rate “probably ever,” but that claim is flatly wrong. While 2023’s 274 homicides were the city’s highest since 1997, Washington recorded far more killings in the late 1980s and early 1990s — topping 470 in both 1990 and 1991, when the city’s population was smaller.
The city’s homicide count fell to 187 in 2024 — a 32 percent drop — and has fallen another 12 percent so far in 2025, with 99 killings through Sunday. Carjackings tell a similar story: after peaking at 959 in 2023, the number plunged to roughly 500 last year and stands at 188 so far this year, down from nearly 300 at the same point in 2024.
The city’s police union has accused local leaders of “cooking the books” by downgrading some offenses to make crime trends look better, a charge the White House has eagerly amplified. But the allegation remains unproven, and crime analyst Jeff Asher notes that independent sources — including ShotSpotter gunfire alerts and hospital data on gunshot injuries — also show violence declining in line with official figures.
Nationwide, FBI data shows nearly every major crime category fell in 2024: rape was down 5.2 percent, aggravated assault 3 percent, burglary 8.6 percent, larceny 5.5 percent, and reported hate crimes 1.5 percent. The steepest drop came in motor vehicle theft, which fell 18.6 percent after years of sharp increases.
But listening to Trump tell it, America is teetering on the edge of collapse, with violent criminals overrunning the streets. From his press conferences to campaign rallies, he paints a picture of a nation under siege — a narrative that stands in stark contrast to the steep drops in crime documented by law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Trump has hinted at extending his D.C. model to other “lawless” cities. But the data shows crime is generally heading in the opposite direction of the crisis he describes — undermining the central argument for his federal takeover of local policing.
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