WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — During a Saturday morning news conference discussing recent U.S. military strikes in Venezuela, President Donald Trump touched on a topic that has taken the hot seat on the home front in recent months— crime in Washington, D.C.
“I just have to congratulate our military, Pete and everybody in our National Guard, cause the job that they have done—whether it is in Washington, D.C., where we have a totally safe city, where it was one of the most unsafe cities anywhere in the world frankly— and now we have no crime in Washington, D.C,” Trump said.
The president briefly referenced the ambush-style shooting that left 20-year-old National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom dead and 24-year-old Guardsman Andrew Wolfe seriously injured in November; however, he went on to say that, aside from that incident, D.C. has not had a murder in several months.
“We haven’t had a killing in a long period of time, six, seven months,” Trump said. “We used to have two, on average two a week in Washington, our capital, we don’t have that anymore.”
DC News Now fact-checked this claim. According to Metropolitan Police Department data, there were five murders in December alone, with one taking place as recently as New Year’s Eve.
Over a seven-month period, from June 3, 2025, to Jan. 3, 2026, 59 homicides took place in the nation’s capital, D.C. crime data shows.
However, MPD data does show that overall violent crime was down 29% in 2025 from 2024, with homicides at a 32% decrease.
Trump’s comments were similar to remarks he made in late November, claiming that there had been no murders in the District in the past six months.
“We haven’t had a murder in six months … and it’s really been a beautiful thing to see, so Washington, D.C., is now a totally safe city,” the president said at the time.