'Those are Maduro numbers': Top Trump advisor explodes when confronted about crime claims

12 September 2024

Since the 1990s, Caracas, Venezuela has had some of Latin America's highest violent crime rates. But former U.S. President Donald Trump has been claiming, on the campaign trail, that crime in Venezuela is "down by 67 percent" — arguing that the decrease is due to the leftist Venezuelan government sending its criminals to the United States.

PolitiFact's Maria Ramirez Uribe, however, has been fact-checking Trump's claims — stressing that while crime is down in Venezuela, Trump has been unable to show a 67 percent decrease.

According to Uribe, "The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence's numbers show a 25 percent drop in violent deaths from 2022 to 2023, including homicides, deaths resulting from police intervention and deaths under investigation. Despite that drop, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence notes the national rate is still high compared with other countries in the region. In 2023, Venezuela had a rate of 26.8 violent deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence."

Regardless, Trump ally Stephen Miller continues to echo Trump's claims about crime in Venezuela under leftist President Nicolas Maduro. But he got some aggressive fact-checking during a recent conversation with José María Del Pino, a Chilean journalist who has some Venezuelan relatives (including his mother-in-law).

When Miller, talking to reporters, claimed that crime in Venezuela was "down by 67 percent," Del Pino asked, "Are you trusting the official figures from the Venezuelan dictatorship?…. Those are Maduro numbers."

Miller, annoyed by the question, responded, "I am believing it is in the interest of a criminal dictator to let his criminals out of their jails and come to our country."

But when Del Pino asked if Miller had any "numbers" to back that up and honestly believed that Caracas has lower crime rates than U.S. cities, he grew increasingly irate and shouted, "I am trusting the fact that Kamala Harris is letting illegal immigrants into this country who are raping and murdering children…. I'm yelling because children are being raped and murdered."

Watch the video of the exchange below, or by clicking this link.

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