Rep. Elise Stefanik speaks during the Republican National Convention Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik spoke at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, praising Donald Trump as the only candidate she believes can secure the border, rein in violent crime and “caus(e) our enemies to fear us.”
“We always say ‘this is the most important election in our lifetime,’ but we know deep down, this one truly is,” Stefanik said.
She said the Constitution and the “soul of the nation” are on the ballot in the race between former president Trump and current President Joseph Biden.
She shared concerns of high crime statistics, called back to her highlights on the national stage and made inaccurate claims about the border.
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Rep. Elise Stefanik speaks during the Republican National Convention Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Border
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Stefanik said the U.S. under Biden has “the most wide-open border in our nation’s history.” This is factually inaccurate. The current U.S.-Mexican border wasn’t created until 72 years after the nation was founded, the U.S. Border Patrol was only created 100 years ago in 1924 and the country’s first immigration restrictions were passed in 1882 to target Chinese laborers coming through the Mexican border. Before that, there was little formal enforcement of the border.
The number of Border Patrol agents in the U.S. had quadrupled in the past three decades and there is much more technology, fencing and arrests at the border than there were in the past.
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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attend the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Crime
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Stefanik talked about a “violent crime crisis,” which she said is fueled by Democrats with “pro-criminal sanctuary cities and defund the police policies,” singling out her home state of New York.
New York has not defunded the police. The New York State Police budget increases every year, and is currently at $1.3 billion.
Crime does appear to be higher in this state in recent years.
Crime statistics tend to be incomplete, not comprehensive and not precise. But the data from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services shows violent crime in New York relatively steady through the Trump presidency — staying between a high of 70,728 and a low of 68,598 incidents. These incidents have risen in the first two years of the Biden presidency — hitting 76,564 in 2021 and 85,108 in 2022.
Nationwide, the Pew Research Center found this year that FBI data shows the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022.
In 2020, during the last year of Trump’s presidency and the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. murder rate saw its largest single-year increase on record — 30%.
Recent FBI statistics show murders fell 26%, reported rapes fell 25.7% and violent crime fell 15% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 2023.
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Foreign affairs
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Stefanik said Biden has caused “chaos” around the world. She pointed to the withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupying the country, which led to many deaths, and American allies left in Taliban-ruled regions. But she also blamed Biden for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel last year.
Stefanik said Biden’s party supports “vile antisemitism” on college campuses, referring to the student protests at colleges which invest in Israel during Israel’s war in Gaza.
“(They were) chanting ‘Death to Israel, death to Jews, death to America,’” Stefanik said.
Some protestors did say these things; some did not.
She called back to congressional hearings in December and May, when she gained national attention and an influx of donations for her questioning of university presidents over the protests on their campuses.
“Who saw that congressional hearing with the college presidents of so-called elite universities?” Stefanik asked the crowd. “Oh wait, they are former presidents.”
One of those “so-called elite universities” is her alma mater, Harvard.
Stefanik said she asked the former presidents a moral question: Does calling for genocide of Jews violate their universities’ codes of conduct? All of them said it depends on the context, if the statement was targeting an individual.
“America knows, it does not depend on the context,” Stefanik said Tuesday.
She said, if elected, Trump will condemn antisemitism and stand with Israel.
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Call to action
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“I have been proud to always stand in the breach during the toughest moments for president Trump,” Stefanik said.
Stefanik said she led the charge against so-called “illegal impeachments,” of Trump, stood for “election integrity” by objecting to electors during the certification of Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021, and has unified House Republicans.
Stefanik ended by quoting Galatians 6:9: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
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Inflation
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Stefanik pinned the blame on Biden for the U.S. having the highest rate of inflation in her lifetime. The rate of inflation is down from its high in 2022, but the 2022 peak of 9.1% was the highest in decades. And prices have not dropped yet. Stefanik said this is “devastating families.”
