“And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years. I used to use that — I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years.”
Trump in meeting with Sheriffs on 2/7/2017
Truth: Murders declined by 42 percent between 1993 and 2014, even as the U.S. population rose by 25 percent over the same period.
This lie is inconvenient for Trump because he seeks to exploit fear as a mechanism for expanding his power. “For Trump, the potency of fear has become more than a campaign tool; it’s now a governing mechanism.”