evidence: After dropping the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency, violent crime rose in 2020, his final year in office. The increase was big enough to erase those collective decreases. The violent crime rate in Trump’s final year in office was still slightly lower than it was during the final year of his predecessor, President Barack Obama. Experts said it’s wrong to pin the blame for rising violent crime solely on Trump. The spike was caused by a confluence of the coronavirus pandemic and societal upheaval after George Floyd’s 2020 murder.