Violent crime is dropping sharply on Trump's watch, and the same press corps that spent the Biden years amplifying every crime spike is now working overtime to make sure nobody credits the current administration for the reversal.
The stakes are straightforward: if law and order works, Americans deserve to know it—and the people trying to downplay it are the same institutions that spent four years insisting you were safer under the politicians who let cities burn.
President Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday to tout the numbers ahead of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday. "Murder is down to the LOWEST level since 1900, and we just saw the biggest one year drop in RECORDED HISTORY," Trump wrote. "Violent Crime arrests are UP 100%. Robberies, Carjackings, and Assaults, are all CRASHING."
Preliminary FBI data released in May backs the broad trend: violent crime fell 9.3 percent from 2024 to 2025, and property crime dropped 12.4 percent. The FBI noted the figures are subject to change before the final report.
Newsweek acknowledged the data supports parts of Trump's claims, then immediately brought in a criminologist to explain why the president probably doesn't deserve credit. Angelo Kevin Brown of Arkansas State University told Newsweek the economy is the main driver and that the decrease "predates Trump's time in office." He also pointed out most crime policy is local, not federal—convenient qualifiers that somehow never surfaced when the same outlets were blaming Biden's predecessor for every spike.
CBS News, meanwhile, buried the crime numbers entirely. Its preview of Blanche's hearing focused on Democratic plans to grill him over "politicized prosecutions," the Jeffrey Epstein files, and a nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund tied to a settlement over the leak of Trump's tax returns. A federal judge in Miami sanctioned a Trump attorney in that IRS case Monday, raising questions about whether Blanche violated ethical rules. Blanche has insisted the fund is "dead" and "not coming back to life."
The framing gap is the story. Under Biden, crime spikes were covered as systemic failure demanding federal action. Under Trump, crime drops are covered as statistical noise with no clear cause—and certainly no credit to the administration enforcing the laws.
Blanche's confirmation isn't guaranteed. The death of Senator Lindsey Graham narrowed the GOP's Judiciary Committee margin, and Republican senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis remain skeptical of the IRS settlement deal. Newsweek framed Graham's departure as a political obstacle; CBS called it an "unexpected death" that narrowed the margin. Both noted the same swing votes, but only CBS explained why those Republicans might balk.
The question for Wednesday's hearing isn't whether crime is falling—the data says it is. The question is whether a single Republican senator will side with the press corps and pretend it isn't happening.
