Dystopia 2024: How Republicans' depiction of U.S. stacks up to the facts

It's a strikingly bleak picture of the United States being painted at the Republican convention: a dystopian portrait of a violent, impoverished, weakened nation.

The four-day gathering in Milwaukee, Wis., is one long prosecution of Joe Biden's presidency — of inflation, crime, unlawful migration and global instability all up, up, up, with the nation going down, down, down.

"They're destroying the American spirit," said convention speaker Sara Workman, who lost her husband to a drug overdose. "Everywhere we look there's pain, chaos and crisis."

The actual scorecard is more nuanced. 

On some fronts, the bleak messaging is either outdated or wrong: inflation is down, as is violent crime, while wages are up. In fact, wages are higher than under Donald Trump's presidency, even counting inflation. Homicides? Lower than in 2020.

The Republican narrative is correct on irregular migration stats. They're high. As is global instability and war-related violence, Wednesday's convention theme. 

Here's a close look at some of the data.

Inflation: U.S. worse, now better than G7

On Day 1 of the convention, an ad played on the overheard screen showing people suffering under the weight of high gas prices, high food prices and, generally, high inflation.

"Joe Biden's policies, Kamala [Harris]'s policies, they're killing us," said one man in the ad, fuming over high prices at the grocery store.

Republicans can, correctly, point to this: in the last few years, the U.S. had its highest inflation rate in four decades, and that rate was slightly higher than the G7 average post-2021.

In fact, the U.S. has had higher inflation than Canada in every year over this period, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.

Over 25 punishing months, the cost of living grew faster than wages, leaving Americans poorer. But that trend reversed just over a year ago.

Here's what Republicans aren't saying: the economy has grown every year Biden has been president. It tracked behind the OECD average for the first part, but has since surpassed it.

For 12 straight months, wages have outstripped inflation. The U.S. inflation rate dropped below the G7 average last year; the overall rate is now three per cent, and some goods are now actually seeing prices fall backward.

Was inflation Joe Biden's fault? Some analysts warned early on that his party's pandemic relief spending in 2021 might contribute to it, but it's just one of several factors.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office cites four factors: the pandemic's supply-chain disruptions, low unemployment, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and, yes, fiscal policy.

Gas prices: Why they rose and then dropped

Yes, gas prices skyrocketed early in Biden's presidency, and remain higher than under Trump.

Republicans blamed Biden for anti-oil policies and chanted, "Drill, baby, drill!" at the convention. The example they reliably point to is Biden cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline on Day 1 of his presidency.

"When you fill up your gas tank, you're pissed," celebrity Amber Rose told the convention.

Yet the U.S. is now producing record levels of oil, more than any country ever. That's in addition to the record spending on clean energy.

In fact, gas prices are back to where they were in the early 2010s, before the 2014 crash. 

One Canadian oil industry analyst called Keystone XL a non-factor in the 2021 gas spike, as the project wasn't nearly complete.

Rory Johnston, an analyst at Commodity Context in Toronto, said there are things Biden could have done at the margins to reduce prices, but they would have drawn criticism for minimal benefit, such as draining more from strategic reserves or withholding new sanctions on Venezuela.

"The types of things that could be done wouldn't be worth the gain," said Johnston.

The big issue, he said, was storage facilities were crammed with unused oil during the pandemic and oil companies paused projects. A surge in demand in 2021 suddenly led to a shortage.

Murders: Up, up, down, down

Murder rates indeed surged during the pandemic — CBC News chronicled the phenomenon in 2022. In fact, the pattern started in 2020, during Donald Trump's presidency.

Yet by the time that 2022 story appeared, the trend was already reversing. Homicides dropped that year, then enjoyed a historic drop again in 2023, and have plunged even more precipitously this year, down 26 per cent in the first quarter of 2024.

In fact, homicide rates are now way lower than in the final year of Trump's presidency. Rape, robbery and property crime are also plunging this year, according to the FBI.

Murders are down in most cities, including last year, and again this year, in New York. This, of course, offers no consolation to families who've lost loved ones, including Madeline Brame, who gave a rousing speech at the convention on Tuesday.

She blamed soft-on-crime policies, including from the prosecutor who charged Trump — and successfully convicted him — for falsifying business records.

She said a group of attackers killed her son, Hason Correa, a war veteran, and that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg had reduced the charges for several of them.

"Two of the homicidal maniacs responsible for my son's death had their gang assault and murder charges completely dismissed," she said. "The injustice was devastating for me and my family."

Irregular migration: still high

Several convention-goers linked crime to illegal migration. It's a recurring theme at an event where people have waved signs saying, "Mass Deportation Now!", a reference to Trump's promise to expel millions of migrants.

One speaker, Michael Morin, referred to a man accused in the murder of his sister in Maryland, an accused gang member from El Salvador who allegedly crossed into the U.S. a fourth time after being expelled on three occasions.

Migrants are behind a minuscule percentage of U.S. killings. But critics of Biden's handling of the border say that's no excuse, citing some highly publicized cases.

"My sister's death was preventable," Morin said.

"Open borders are often portrayed as compassionate and virtuous. But there is nothing compassionate about allowing violent criminals [in]."

The truth about irregular border-crossing is it's still at near-historic levels, although the number of people caught entering between crossings is slightly down this year.

America's political parties, however, disagree about what to do. 

Republicans blame Democrats for not accepting their package of higher barriers and harsher deportation. Democrats blame Republicans for bailing on a bipartisan bill that had been negotiated for months, just to please Trump.

Republicans counter that the president has more powers he could use to expel people; Democrats say to do this properly takes a new law, with new asylum rules and more money for immigration judges to decide cases quickly.

It's been going on like this for years. A grand bargain on immigration reform — more enforcement in exchange for amnesty for people already in the U.S. — appears stalled indefinitely.

Fentanyl deaths keep coming up at the convention, too, with Republicans blaming the current administration, linking drug smuggling to porous borders.

Fentanyl overdoses have been skyrocketing for years. They surged during the pandemic in Trump's final year in office, grew more, then settled at a higher level. 

The Biden administration rejects the idea that gaps in the border are driving imports. Stats show the vast majority of fentanyl seized is at legal crossings, from U.S. citizens hiding it in their vehicles.

One Border Patrol official challenged that assumption in a congressional hearing last year, saying his Arizona staff finds large quantities carried by backpack-wearing drug mules on remote, illegal crossings.

Global instability reigns

Here's one thing the parties agree on: the world is a more volatile place. Wars on different continents threaten to erupt into regional conflagrations.

Deaths in armed conflict have already jumped since 2022, with violence in Africa, Eastern Europe and now in the Middle East. 

The parties don't agree on the path to stability. Trump's Republicans are unapologetically pro-Israel, while the Biden administration has sanctioned some Jewish settlers and paused some weapons transfers to Israel.

The Democrats are fully behind Ukraine, while there were signs at the Republican convention insisting Trump would end the war in Ukraine. He's said he could do it in a day.

He's said nothing about how, or about what Ukraine would look like. He's criticized sanctions on Russia. He's reportedly been presented with a proposal by aides to cut off military support for Ukraine unless peace negotiations start.

Ukraine's president is keen to hear this plan.

"If Trump knows how to finish this war, he should tell us today," Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently told Bloomberg. "If there are risks to Ukrainian independence, if we lose statehood — we want to be ready for this."