Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” morphed throughout the just-concluded Republican National Convention into “Make America Safe Again.”
Speaker after speaker hammered away at President Barack Obama and his first-term secretary of state — and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — Hillary Clinton for policies they claimed had endangered the nation.
When Trump himself took the stage Thursday night, he began by referring to recent terror attacks and cop shootings, promising the audience, “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon — come to an end.”
He said that on Inauguration Day in 2017, “Safety will be restored.”
The night before, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recalled the 9/11 attacks and said the country handed over by Obama and Clinton was even less secure. “The danger is even worse than September 11, when 19 hijackers murdered almost 3,000 Americans,” Gingrich said.
And on the opening evening of the convention, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul played on Ronald Reagan’s iconic question during a presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee asked convention-goers Monday night, “Are you safer than you were eight years ago?”
Here is a list of statistics from 2008 and 2014, the year for which the most comprehensive recent data are available, comparing 10 indicators of the security and well-being of Americans from the start to the end of the Obama administration.
