White House Touts DC Crime Numbers It Previously Said Were False

Now that Trump has taken over the local police, a favorable crime trend suddenly reflects well on his administration.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump, when confronted with data showing crime here already declining before he took over the city’s police force, has repeatedly dismissed the data as fake and manipulated.

But with the same agency now reporting continued drops in crime, his White House is eager to tout data it once derided as untrustworthy.

“Total crime in D.C. is down 19% and violent crime is down 30%,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during Thursday’s press briefing, ticking off double-digit percentage reductions in homicides, robberies, car thefts and assaults. “These numbers prove the president’s bold actions to make D.C. safe and beautiful again are working just like he said they would.”

The numbers come from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, which the president had previously accused of releasing fake crime data to create a false impression of safety. (The White House confirmed to HuffPost it’s using MPD numbers but declined to comment.)

The embrace of the city’s crime statistics is no surprise from an administration that bragged about positive economic data all year, only to fire its head statistician as soon as the jobs numbers went south. It’s not complicated: The White House now likes D.C. crime data because the positive numbers reflect well on the president.