Hillary Clinton pledges to end epidemic of violence, but Obama says crime is down substantially

Brett T. | 11:35 PM on July 23, 2016

Despite the nationwide heat wave, President Obama managed to hit the links Saturday, but not before holding a meeting Friday on policing practices. The good news, according to the president: violent crime has been on the decline for decades.

Addressing a WH meeting on policing practices; Pres Obama again stresses that violent crime substantially lower than 10, 20 and 30 yrs ago.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) July 22, 2016

That might have been the president’s way of countering the “dystopian American hellscape” depicted by Donald Trump in his acceptance speech at the RNC Thursday night. Not only was law and order a major theme of his speech: The New York Times notes that Trump said the words “law and order,” four times, “each time drawing out the syllables.”

Hillary Clinton has been known to draw out her syllables as well depending on the audience, but apparently she, like most of the nation, missed the president’s update Friday. On her website, she makes note of the groups with whom she will work to “take on the epidemic of violence” that claims 33,636 lives a year with guns alone.

So if Trump is scare-mongering and his vision of America doesn’t jibe with the facts, what is Clinton up to, and why doesn’t her claim of an epidemic of violence mesh with the president’s much rosier picture?

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