FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims made by Trump in California

In a press conference from his Los Angeles-area golf club, former President Donald Trump revisited several topics from Tuesday night’s debate, repeating several false and misleading claims on issues including crime, the economy, and immigration. Here’s are the facts: Trump again falsely claims crime skyrocketed under the Biden administration. CLAIM: New numbers show that crime has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. THE FACTS: Violent crime surged during the pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year — the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. But FBI data released in June shows that the overall violent crime rate declined 15% in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

One expert has cautioned, however, that those figures are preliminary and may overstate the actual reduction in crime. On Friday, Trump cited numbers he said were from the “bureau of justice statistics” to claim crime was up. This appears to be a reference to the National Crime Victimization Survey recently released by the Justice Department, which shows that the number of times people were victims of violent crime increased by about 40% from 2020 to 2023. The report notes, however, that while the rate of violent victimizations in 2023 was higher than it was in 2020 and 2021, it was not statistically different from the rate in 2019, when Trump was president. That survey aims to capture both crimes reported to police and crimes that are not reported to police and is conducted annually through interviews with about 150,000 households.

It doesn’t include murders or crimes against people under the age of 12. No basis for claims that violent crime has spiked as a result of the influx of migrants. CLAIM: Thousands of people are being killed by “illegal migrants” in the U. S. THE FACTS: This is not supported by evidence.

FBI statistics do not separate crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U. S. -Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. In fact, national statistics show violent crime is on the way down. Inflation has not reached record levels.

CLAIM: Prices have gone up “like no one’s ever seen before. ” THE FACTS: That’s not accurate. Inflation did soar in 2021-22, though it rose by much more in 1980 when inflation topped 14%. It peaked at 9. 1% in June 2022.

Economists largely blame the inflation spike on the pandemic’s disruptions to global supply chains, which reduced the supply of semiconductors, cars and other goods. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also pushed up gas and food prices. And Biden’s stimulus checks and other spending contributed by turbocharging spending coming out of the pandemic. Inflation has now fallen to 2. 5%, not far from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

Prices are still about 19% higher than they were before the pandemic, but the Census Bureau reported Tuesday that household incomes have risen by a similar amount, leaving inflation-adjusted incomes at roughly the same level as they were in 2019. Trump raises false claims to suggest voting systems are fraudulent CLAIM: The voting system isn’t honest. Millions and millions of ballots.