Trump’s nationwide crime-drop triumph reveals the left’s empty-headed excuses
In Tuesday’s record-breakingly long State of the Union address, President Donald Trump dedicated only a few minutes to an accomplishment he helped secure: The similarly record-breaking drop in violent crime in cities across the country.
Media “fact checkers” swooped in to obfuscate the connection.
But crime is down dramatically over the last year.
And experts, the legacy media and many Democrats are scratching their heads.
As a recent New York Times headline declared, “What’s Behind the Staggering Drop in the Murder Rate? No One Knows for Sure.”
Not until 21 paragraphs into the Times piece do the authors give us a hint: Experts “do not wholly discount” policing, particularly “the multipronged effort that many cities mounted against violence in the past few years, including hot-spot policing . . . and focused deterrence.”
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In other words, violent crime is in freefall across the country thanks in large part to better, more targeted policing aimed at restoring law and order.
The biggest threat to our renewed ability to combat crime might be a legacy media hamstrung by the baggage of prior anti-police animus.
Too often, “expert”-driven coverage ignores the city-specific evidence that restoring order improves communities.
In September, for example, the Democratic mayor of Memphis, Tenn. — long among the most violent places in America — welcomed a federal task force to assist local and state law enforcement’s crime-fighting efforts.
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As even the Times admitted soon after, “the task force has made more than 6,300 arrests, conducted more than 68,000 traffic stops and recovered 1,532 firearms . . . Murder and sexual assault are down nearly 42%.”
Similarly, Baltimore saw a 50-year low in murders in 2025, which city officials attributed to a focus on arresting repeat violent criminal offenders and prosecuting them aggressively.
After all, as The Washington Post reported, “three-quarters of shootings in Baltimore involved fewer than 2% of city residents. Many of those people had extensive criminal histories.”
Or as Baltimore City State Attorney Ivan Bates said bluntly, “It’s a small group of individuals in Baltimore who are robbing, shooting and killing.”
New York City adopted “precision policing,” in which the NYPD targeted police resources to crime hotspots and used crime data to identify and apprehend repeat offenders.
And, as Trump crowed Tuesday, he deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital in August, while federalizing the corruption-scarred DC police.
Sensationalist coverage at the time warned the move would only make the problem worse.
Crime data shows just the opposite.
A CBS News analysis found that three weeks after Trump’s action, “violent crime is down in Washington by almost half.”
But DC’s shift predates the Guard’s arrival, and goes beyond violent crime.
Starting in 2023, the capital upped the number of police on its subway system, and in 2024 started cracking down on fare evasion — despite activist outrage.
The move quickly made the Metro system safer and more orderly, cutting fare avoidance by 70%.
It shouldn’t be “mysterious” that failing to enforce the law drives up crime.
This was the chief lesson of the crime wave of the 1970s: Tolerance and complacency allows crime to fester and grow.
So why isn’t America jumping for joy in unison?
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The usual political dynamics explain part of it: Trump — as ever — rushed to claim credit for the turnaround, and Democrats leaped to dispute him.
But perhaps more important, the methods that have helped drive down violent crime run contrary to years of advocacy from elected Democrats, liberal activists and the same media tasked with reporting this good news on policing and public safety.
The anti-police phenomenon of 2020, amid a broader rethink on race and social justice, ushered in an enormous spike in crime.
As Charles Fain Lehman wrote in The Free Press, the death of George Floyd “instigated one of the largest protest movements in American history” and led directly to constraints on police activity in many big cities.
“Unsurprisingly, murder soared,” he noted.
No shock that the same outlets and elected leaders who supported these dangerous ideas then, aren’t inclined to explain the benefits of their reversal now.
But improving public safety requires an honest look at the facts, absent political posturing.
And those closest to the facts are crediting the administration’s help in driving down violent crime.
Perhaps, rather than quibble with Trump’s grandiose rhetoric, the legacy media should acknowledge that his push to reduce violence has benefited the state of our union.
Recognizing this doesn’t demand a belief that police behavior and tactics are without blemish.
But one doesn’t need a “Thin Blue Line” bumper sticker to understand that law enforcement is a critical element in, well, enforcing the law.
That such an observation was ever in doubt must now be given a first-class, bipartisan delivery to the dustbin of history.
Drew Holden is the managing editor of American Compass. Adapted from Commonplace.
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