Trump takes shot at ABC presidential debate moderator over crime rates fact-check during rally
President-elect Donald Trump took a shot at ABC News' David Muir when recalling his claim that "violent crime is coming down" during the ABC Presidential Debate in September.
During his pre-inauguration rally Sunday, Trump acknowledged the "hundreds and even thousands of victims" of migrant crime, remarking that crime was on the rise even without illegal immigrants.
Trump then recalled how Muir fact-checked him during his presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris in September.
"Do you remember I did the debate, and I had David Muir from ABC saying, ‘No, no crime has gone down.’ I said, ‘No, no, it‘s gone through the roof.’ Crime has gone through the roof. David [said] no, no crime has gone down. I said it‘s gone through the roof. And then he goes, ‘Uh, I disagree with that.’ The next day they announced that crime was up like 40%. This guy is…the whole thing is so bad," Trump said.
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Muir, who served as co-moderator with Linsey Davis at the time, insisted during the debate that Trump was not accurate when he claimed that crime was "through the roof."
"President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country," Muir said.
"The FBI -- 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," Trump responded.
While ABC News did not announce crime was up "the next day," an FBI revision one month later in October appeared to vindicate Trump’s original comments. After initially reporting that violent crime was down by 2.1% in 2022, the FBI later admitted there was a 4.5% increase with a net total of about 80,029 more violent crimes in 2022 over 2021.
Muir did not acknowledge the change on his show "World News Tonight" after the revision was released.
Fox News Digital reached out to ABC News for a comment.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Muir 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 had one against three, but I think we did great. But David Muir of ABC, fake news, when I said that crime is way up in our country, 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 of the different things, almost everything she said, and she was never corrected.
"But he corrected me on crime. He said, ‘No, no, crime has not gone up.' I said crime has gone up massively. He said, 'I'd like to state for the record that crime has not gone up,'" Trump said.