The text with a video posted by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on X summarized its premise — “Since Joe Biden took office, crime has skyrocketed across our country.” That is false, says the Washington Post. The video goes further, including exaggerations and debunked allegations to cast the past few years as unusually harrowing and dangerous ones. In fact, the FBI says that reported violent crime and homicide rates were lower in 2022 than in 2020, the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. The violent crime and property crime rates in 2022 were lower than every year of Trump’s presidency. Only homicides increased, an increase that started during the year the pandemic emerged. (The National Crime Victimization survey, including crime not reported to police, showed an uptick in 2022 though the numbers were generally similar to those in 2018.
Mace says, "Especially in big cities, you see illegal immigrants coming in, beating up our cops and being ... let out of jail...giving the middle finger to America and our men and women in blue and in uniform." The video snippet included in Mace’s video showing a man displaying his middle finger to reporters. The dispute between police and the immigrants turned physical when an officer reacted to an insult. As for the guy with the middle finger? He wasn't there. The district attorney exonerated him after his arrest. Mace then turns to the border: “You’re seeing crime skyrocket. You’re seeing fentanyl cases skyrocket ... we’re literally allowing China to import deadly drugs like fentanyl into this country, and it’s killing our children and killing our citizens. We are allowing Joe Biden to — to have the cartel sneak drugs into the country, smuggle people into the country illegally. Like, it’s just okay to do that under Joe Biden.” In fact, one way we know that fentanyl is being smuggled in is that so much of it is stopped at the border, because it is not okay, the Post says. Much of that smuggling, incidentally, is done by U.S. citizens who are better able to get into the country. The number of deaths from fentanyl did increase in recent years.