A fact-check in the ABC News presidential debate has aged poorly after the FBI quietly made a stunning correction about violent crime rates in the U.S.
In last month’s political showdown between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump cited the rise of violent crime to hammer the Biden-Harris administration’s record.
“Crime here is up and through the roof despite their fraudulent statements that they made,” Trump said. “Crime in this country is through the roof.”
Moments later, ABC debate moderator David Muir attempted to fact-check the Republican nominee.
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Former President Trump hammered Vice President Kamala Harris over the rise in violent crime during the ABC News presidential debate. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country,” Muir responded.
Trump immediately pushed back.
“Excuse me,” Trump told Muir. “They were defrauding statements. They didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”
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A recent FBI revision appears to back Trump. After reporting there was a 2.1% drop in violent crimes in 2022, the FBI now admits there was actually a 4.5% increase.
According to crime and data expert John Lott, the new numbers reflect a net increase of 80,029 violent crimes in 2022 over 2021. He found that under the umbrella of violent crime, there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults that year.
Muir has yet to acknowledge the FBI’s stat change on “World News Tonight,” according to Grabien transcripts.
ABC Presidential Debate co-moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were heavily criticized for constantly fact-checking former President Trump but declining to correct Vice President Kamala Harris. (ABC News)
ABC News did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital‘s request for comment.
ABC News sparked intense fury as its debate moderators repeatedly fact-checked Trump while letting all of Harris’ claims go unchallenged.
Even the liberal writers of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” took a swipe at its broadcast rival for its “biased” debate.
“I had hoped the takeaway of the debate I moderated would be my striking good looks, but unfortunately, it was whether or not I was biased towards the Democrats, which… duh,” cast member Andrew Dismukes’ Muir told viewers, sparking laughs from the audience.
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The FBI quietly admitted there was an uptick in violent crime across the US after reporting a decrease in 2022. (Getty Images)
Trump himself has repeatedly slammed Muir and ABC News, accusing the network of breaking the “deal” it had made with the Trump campaign prior to the debate.
“Now you don’t know this, but we had a deal with ABC that there will be no corrections of any kind, and they violated the deal. Why? Because they’re bad people, and they’re fake news,” Trump said on Sept. 26 . “So he did it many times to me during the debate. He violated the deal. That’s the deal, because you can take anything and try and make up stories with it. We had a deal where that wouldn’t happen. You could do whatever you wanted as soon as the debate was over, but he did it in total violation of what our agreement was. And a lot of people standing right over there [as he looked toward his staff] will tell you exactly what it was, will show you what it was. David Muir has lost all credibility.”
Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.
