Donald Trump repeatedly made false and misleading claims about immigrants “eating the pets”, his connection to Project 2025 and the Central Park Five, among other topics, during his debate with Kamala Harris on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

At the first debate of this presidential election cycle in June – when Joe Biden was still the Democratic party’s nominee – moderators took a completely hands-off approach to factchecking. The light moderation meant that lies and half-truths, most frequently from Trump, went unchallenged during the primetime debate.

Here are the facts on some of the false claims offered during Tuesday’s debate.

Trump claims crime is up in the US

Donald Trump claimed that crime is way up in the US.

The facts: Trump is wrong: crime is actually down. Data from the FBI found that violent crime decreased during the Trump administration, spiking in 2020 during the pandemic and continuing to trend downward afterwards.

Preliminary data from the FBI found that violent crime was down 6% in 2023, and 15% in the first quarter of 2024.

Violent crime decreased throughout most of Trump’s presidency, according to FBI data that uses information provided by law enforcement agencies. However, it spiked in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It has trended downward since 2020 across the US, nearing pre-pandemic levels in 2022. Preliminary FBI data for 2023 shows that violent crime overall was down another 6% that year.

Though the data is preliminary, it includes numbers from...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMimgFBVV95cUxPdW92NmRUd01NbFcyTEg4bF9s...