White House credits Trump for violent crime drop as FBI reports steep fall

The White House said on 4 November that President Donald Trump had produced “the largest drop in violent crime in modern history”. The claim appeared in a statement predicting that Democrats would fail to reverse his policies during the final two years of his presidency.

The statement followed the midterm elections, in which Democrats won the House of Representatives and the Senate, according to Dutch broadcaster EenVandaag. The White House did not specify a figure, period or source for its crime claim.

In August, the White House made a similar claim citing FBI data. The bureau estimated that violent crime fell by 9.3% between 2024 and 2025, using data from participating law enforcement agencies covering 96.2% of the US population. The FBI said the year-on-year fall in the violent crime rate was the largest since its estimates began in 1936. Those figures describe a change in crime reported to police; they do not, by themselves, establish what caused it.

In October, the White House cited a separate national survey of crime victims and said non-fatal violent crime was down 25%. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that decline for a narrower category: violent crime excluding simple assault. Its estimated rate fell from 9.9 to 7.4 incidents per 1,000 people aged 12 and over between 2024 and 2025.

The survey includes incidents that were not reported to police. Its 2025 estimates are preliminary, and the bureau cautions that results from the redesigned survey cannot be compared with those from its predecessor.