Donald Trump remains convinced he was the greatest president ever. That doesn’t mean voters should participate in collective amnesia. President Biden needs to refresh their memories on a daily basis, making the case: “Of course you’re better off now than four years ago!”
“In May 2021, the Justice Department launched our violent crime reduction strategy aimed at addressing the spike in violent crime that occurred during the pandemic,” Attorney General Merrick Garland pointed out in a statement last week. He argued that the department worked “in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives.”
Trump’s “migrant crime” claim has been debunked repeatedly. In New York, for example, “police data indicate that there has been no surge in crime since April 2022, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas started sending buses of migrants to New York to protest the federal government’s border policy,” the New York Times reported last month. And “many major categories of crime — including rape, murder and shootings — have decreased, according to an analysis of the New York Police Department’s month-by-month statistics since April 2022.”
Nationwide, “the most common finding across all these different kinds of studies is that immigration to an area is either not associated with crime in that area, or is negatively associated with crime in that area,” criminologist Charis Kubrin told CNN last month. “Meaning more immigration equals less crime.”
By the time Trump left office in January 2021, KFF reported, “the number of deaths from covid-19 increased so rapidly that it has clearly become the number one cause of death in the U.S., with an average of more than 3,000 people per day dying of covid-19.”
Meanwhile, Trump attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a move that would have deprived 32 million Americans of coverage by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and allowed insurance companies to resume exclusion of preexisting conditions. Now, he periodically talks about cutting Medicare, only to later reverse himself when criticized.
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Crime
As Biden recently recalled: “In 2020, before I took office, the prior administration oversaw the largest increase in murders ever recorded.” By contrast, an FBI data report last week shows, as NBC News noted, “the new fourth-quarter numbers showed a 13% decline in murder in 2023 from 2022, a 6% decline in reported violent crime and a 4% decline in reported property crime.” Analysts suspect that “the biggest factor behind the drop in crime,” the NBC report said, “may simply be the resumption of anti-crime initiatives by local governments and courts that had stopped during the pandemic.” In large part, the American Rescue Plan made that possible with a massive $15 billion infusion to keep police on payroll and to fund a raft of safety initiatives.“In May 2021, the Justice Department launched our violent crime reduction strategy aimed at addressing the spike in violent crime that occurred during the pandemic,” Attorney General Merrick Garland pointed out in a statement last week. He argued that the department worked “in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives.”
Trump’s “migrant crime” claim has been debunked repeatedly. In New York, for example, “police data indicate that there has been no surge in crime since April 2022, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas started sending buses of migrants to New York to protest the federal government’s border policy,” the New York Times reported last month. And “many major categories of crime — including rape, murder and shootings — have decreased, according to an analysis of the New York Police Department’s month-by-month statistics since April 2022.”
Nationwide, “the most common finding across all these different kinds of studies is that immigration to an area is either not associated with crime in that area, or is negatively associated with crime in that area,” criminologist Charis Kubrin told CNN last month. “Meaning more immigration equals less crime.”
Health care
If the comparison regarding crime is unfavorable for Trump, the comparison on health care is simply devastating. A couple of headlines from four years ago this month as a reminder: “At least 80% of Americans are under stay-at-home orders” (CNN, March 31, 2020); “Trump declares national emergency over coronavirus” (CNBC, March 13, 2020). In spring 2020, New York already had 200,000 reported cases. The Johns Hopkins covid-19 dashboard reported at the end of 2020: “There have been 19,228,424 confirmed covid-19 cases in the United States since the beginning of the pandemic, and 334,116 deaths.” (Biden’s 2024 campaign has cut an ad recalling a few of Trump’s self-congratulatory comments during the crisis.)By the time Trump left office in January 2021, KFF reported, “the number of deaths from covid-19 increased so rapidly that it has clearly become the number one cause of death in the U.S., with an average of more than 3,000 people per day dying of covid-19.”
Meanwhile, Trump attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a move that would have deprived 32 million Americans of coverage by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and allowed insurance companies to resume exclusion of preexisting conditions. Now, he periodically talks about cutting Medicare, only to later reverse himself when criticized.
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