One of President Donald Trump’s biggest campaign themes was that the United States is experiencing a crime plague of historical proportions. On Feb. 7, the newly elected chief executive invited a group of county sheriffs to the White House -- and proceeded to cite a startling crime statistic.

"The murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right?" Trump said. "Did you know that? Forty-seven years. I used to use that -- I’d say that in a speech and everybody was surprised, because the press doesn’t tell it like it is. It wasn’t to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it’s been in, I guess, from 45 to 47 years."

There’s a reason the press didn’t tout that figure — the statement was incorrect.

Trump has, on occasion, accurately stated a statistic along these lines. A day after talking with the sheriffs, Trump offered a more accurate version of this statistic during an address to the Major Cities Chiefs Association winter conference. And during the second presidential debate, Trump said, "We have an increase in murder within our cities, the biggest in 45 years."

However, there’s a difference between saying the country’s largest cities experienced their biggest annual increase in homicides in more than four decades (as Trump said during the debate) and saying that the country is experiencing its highest murder rate overall in more than four decades (as he told the sheriffs).

The national homicide rate is considerably lower than its peak in the 1990s: