Over the last week, President Donald Trump has tried his best to make a spectacle of sending federal agents and the National Guard into Washington to combat a nonexistent crime surge. The act has been a clear attempt to shift focus away from both his administration’s ongoing cover-up of its files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and the deterioration of the economy because of Trump’s tariff policies.

Violent crime in Washington hit a 30-year low last year, and that trend is continuing this year. However, Trump, a serial liar, has tried to counteract reality with conspiracy theories about crime statistics, and his conservative base is eating it up—but why?

Groundwork for crime narrative

In 2015 and 2016, as he pivoted from pushing the racist “birther” conspiracy theory about th

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