![Senior adviser to President Joe Biden, Keisha Lance Bottoms, said Thursday morning on MSNBC that former President Donald Trump is responsible for the rise in violent crimes. [Screenshot MSNBC]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Screen-Shot-2022-11-03-at-10.51.51-AM-e1667487540880.png "Senior adviser to President Joe Biden, Keisha Lance Bottoms, said Thursday morning on MSNBC that former President Donald Trump is responsible for the rise in violent crimes. [Screenshot MSNBC]")
Senior adviser to President Joe Biden, Keisha Lance Bottoms, said Thursday morning on MSNBC that former President Donald Trump is responsible for the rise in violent crimes.
Bottoms joined “José Díaz-Balart Reports,” where she was asked how the White House responds to criticism that the administration is not doing enough to talk about issues that matter most to voters, like crime.
“Well, the president has been out on the road and if anyone has been paying attention they heard him speaking to the issues that are facing the American people and I also want to remind the American people that this uptick in crime was experience in 2020, this is when this began and the people know who was the president at the time,” Bottoms said.
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“So, Keisha, you’re saying that the uptick in crime is due to President Trump?” host José Díaz-Balart asked.
“I am saying that I served as mayor in 2020 and we experienced this uptick in crime in 2020. This is where it began, but that being said, it’s not to place blame on any one person, but it is to say that there are many challenges facing the American people. The president’s very aware of that but to lay blame at his feet for one challenge or another is I think really unfair.”
Voters consistently ranked the issue of crime as one of their main priorities, with a Gallup poll finding 49% of voters rank the economy as their top priority, followed by abortion at 42% and crime at 40%. Republicans lead Democrats in both the economy and crime in terms of handling the issues.
Crime is on the rise nationwide, with 64% of Americans blaming “woke politicians” for the issue, according to a recent Harvard-Harris poll. Fifty-two percent of Democrats, 75% of Republicans and 60% of Independents blamed “woke politicians” rather than “other factors” for the nation’s historic increase in crime.
Democrat-led cities recorded larger increases in homicide rates between 2020 and 2022 when compared to Republican-led cities. Denver, Colorado, for example, is on track for a record-breaking number of murders in 2022.
New York City has seen a 32% increase in robberies, a 38.5% increase in grand larcenies, a 13.9% increase in felony assaults and a 10.9% increase in rapes over the last year, according to NYPD statistics.
Crime did spike in 2020, with experts pointing to the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests as part of the cause. Data from the FBI showed a 30% increase in murders in 2020 compared to the year prior, with NPR reporting economic hardship caused by the pandemic as well as catering trust in police.