Trump ran on “law and order” — but his first week actions will unleash more crime

Donald Trump’s endless first-term bleating about crime and how he was the only one who could bring an end to it was always a joke. It took on new levels of ridiculousness when he spent the next four years accumulating a dizzying number of felony indictments and, eventually, 34 convictions. (There would certainly have been more if he had actually faced trial for stealing classified documents and attempting to steal an election.)

Trump’s alleged crimes weren’t bloodless “white-collar” matters, either. Jan. 6, of course, was a violent assault on the Capitol. A civil jury also found Trump liable for sexually assaulting journalist E. Jean Carroll, which is anyone’s definition of a violent crime. But American political discourse left behind quaint concepts like “making sense” years ago. Trump forged ahead with claims that he would “dismantle the gangs, the street crews and the criminal networks that are ravaging our towns,” even though he and his Jan. 6 co-conspirators look an awful lot like one of those “criminal networks.”

Trump’s lies are exposed, first of all, by the fact that crime rates fell steeply under Joe Biden. And now, Trump just spent his first week back in the White House doing everything he possibly could to increase the levels of street crime ordinary Americans may face. His most overt pro-crime move, of course, was literally springing a bunch of violent criminals from federal prisons with the Jan. 6 pardons. One such person, Daniel Ball, was arrested again hours later on a federal gun charge. His crimes during the insurrection included assaulting police officers and throwing an explosive device inside the Capitol building. On Sunday, another pardoned rioter, Matthew Huttle, was killed by a police officer after “an altercation” during a traffic stop. He had previous convictions for beating a toddler, drunk driving and “disorderly conduct” stemming from battering his partner. Family members of other rioters have expressed fear that their pardoned relatives could come after them, since many of those convicted had prior histories of domestic violence.

Forget dismantling gangs: Trump’s pardons sent a signal to radicalized and violent people that he’d love for them to form right-wing militias and terrorize people he doesn’t like.  As Andy Campbell of HuffPost reports, the Proud Boys — who were “circling the drain” a year ago — are swiftly reforming. Leaders celebrated their reemergence by drinking whiskey, chanting about reclaiming the streets and throwing fascist salutes. As Campbell notes, the Proud Boys largely functioned in the first administration by starting street fights with leftists, often after prolonged harassment of people who were just trying to go about their days in “blue” cities like Portland, Oregon. Trump also pardoned 23 people convicted of blockading abortion clinics, an act that Trump called “peaceful,” even though at least two people were injured during such altercations. As with the Jan. 6 pardons, this sends a signal that the use of force and even violence is just fine if you’re trying to stop women from terminating pregnancies. 

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Most of the people Trump has set free sprung to wreak havoc are white, so of course they aren’t considered “criminals” in MAGA-speak, no matter how heinous their real-world crimes may be. Trump mostly uses “criminal” as a code word for “nonwhite immigrant.” This week, ICE kicked off a dramatic series of deportation raids, and while some of the people they grabbed have criminal records, many do not. Some of those targeted for abuse and harassment aren’t even here illegally. ICE reportedly detained a number of U.S. citizens in New Jersey and Arizona raids, largely because agents targeted people based on perceived ethnic identity. As the New York Times reports, large numbers of migrants who have legal work visas and even Social Security numbers may end up “abruptly detained and swiftly deported.” 

These tactics might satisfy the sadism of Fox News viewers, but one likely side effect of all this is an increase in crime. The reason is twofold. First, as California Attorney general Rob Bonta told Greg Sargent of the New Republic, victims and witnesses of crimes are “much less likely to come forward” if they fear “they would be put in jeopardy because of immigration enforcement.” Second, as Nicholas Grossman, a professor at the University of Illinois, explained on Bluesky, the Trump administration is diverting local and state police “away from murder, rape, gang violence and other serious crimes to round up dishwashers and construction workers.” Law enforcement has limited resources, and every man-hour spent on harassing immigrants is being taken away from dealing with real crime. 

Trump lies about everything, so we shouldn’t assume he’s sincere about wanting to reduce crime. Quite the contrary: He has every reason to think that he will benefit from more crime and chaos. Street fighting and other crimes create images that right-wing media use to terrify their largely elderly, exurban audiences, shoring up even more support for “tough” measures and “crackdowns” on people they don’t like. Most people, especially those who consume authoritarian propaganda, will never see the clear research that shows Trump’s policies lead to more crime. They’ll just see scary images on TVs and nod vigorously along as Trump claims that this proves we need more round-ups, more support for far-right militias and more abuse of innocent people who have nothing to do with such crimes. 

We saw this paradox in action in the summer of 2020, when conservative media exaggerated and often lied about violence during the Black Lives Matter protests. Those protests were overwhelmingly nonviolent, but many voters in rural and suburban areas were led to believe that America’s cities were practically burning down. Instead of blaming the guy who was actually president at the time, many were suckered into conspiracy theories accusing the “deep state” of constraining him. Trump leveraged that propaganda into claims that he needed even more unchecked power. 

All that came in response to an imaginary crisis, built mostly on Fox News and other outlets who used a handful of misleading video clips repeatedly to portray the protest movement as as a violent uprising. When real crime happens, Trump can embrace, it, declaring that he’ll fix the problem if only the public and their elected representatives bow down before him even harder. We got a taste of this last time around as well. Proud Boys went into relatively liberal cities like Portland and picked fights with locals. Those chaotic images were broadcast far and wide by conservative media, who blamed “antifa” for literally all of it. After  shifting blame to the left, they claimed that the “emergency” justified rolling back civil rights.

In other words, Donald Trump needs crime, so he can pretend to save us from it. He will clearly invent imaginary crime if he needs to, but even he understands that lies are more persuasive if you have pictures that seem to back them up.