President-elect Donald Trump has taken aim at ABC News’ David Muir as he recalled his claim that “violent crime is on the way” during the ABC presidential debate in September.
During his pre-inauguration rally SundayTrump acknowledged the “hundreds and even thousands of victims” of immigrant crime, noting that crime was increasing even without illegal immigrants.
Trump then recalled how Muir fact-checked him during his presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris in September.
“Remember when I was doing the debate and ABC’s David Muir said, ‘No, no crime was committed.’ I said, ‘No, no, it’s through the roof.’ Crime has gone through the roof. David (said) no, no crime was committed. I said it’s gone through the roof. And then he says, ‘Eh, I don’t agree with that.’ The next day they announced that crime had increased by 40%. This guy is…the whole thing is so bad,” Trump said.
Newly elected US President Donald Trump arrives to attend a rally the day before he will be inaugurated for a second term, in Washington, US, on January 19, 2025. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
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Muir, then co-moderator with Linsey Davis, emphasized during the debate that Trump was wrong when he claimed crime was “through the roof.”
“President Trump, as you know, the FBI says that violent crime in this country is generally declining,” Muir said.
“The FBI – they’re cheating on statements. They don’t include the worst cities. They do not include the cities with the worst crime. It was fraud. Just as their number of 818,000 jobs they said they created turned out to be. being a fraud,” Trump responded.
The ABC presidential debate co-moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, were heavily criticized for continually fact-checking former President Trump but refusing to correct Vice President Kamala Harris. (ABC News)
While ABC News did not announce that the crime would be addressed “the next day,” an FBI review a month later in October seemed to justify Trump’s original comments. After initially reporting that violent crime was down 2.1% in 2022, the FBI later admitted there was a 4.5% increase for a net total of approximately 80,029 more violent crimes in 2022 than in 2021.
Muir did not acknowledge the change on his show “World News Tonight” after the revision was released.
Fox News digital contacted ABC News for comment.
Trump has Muir attacked repeatedly for fact-checking him during the debate while ignoring Harris.
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“And during the debate I mentioned that and David Muir, a real lightweight,” Trump said in September. “I was one against three, but I think we did a great job. But David Muir from ABC, fake news, when I said crime in our country is way up, he corrected me, he corrected me and so much and it was right what I said: He didn’t correct (Vice President Kamala Harris) one time, and what she said was wrong, absolutely wrong. So many different… Charlottesville, she was wrong, all those different things, almost everything she said , and she was never corrected.
Trump has frequently attacked Muir after FBI reviews showed an increase in violent crime. (Heidi Gutman/ABC via Getty Images; Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“But he corrected me on the crime front. He said, ‘No, no, crime hasn’t gone up.’ I said crime has gone up tremendously. He said, ‘I want to be clear that crime has not gone up,'” Trump said.
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