Donald Trump has suggested that domestic violence should not be counted in official crime statistics, dismissing the seriousness of spousal abuse as “a little fight with the wife.”
The president made the comments, which sparked a swift backlash, while discussing his high-profile crime crackdown in Washington, D.C. Trump declared an emergency in the District of Columbia last month to allow for a federal takeover of policing in the nation’s capital city, sending in the National Guard and other federal agents to help local law enforcement to stamp out urban crime.
Speaking at Washington’s Museum of the Bible on Monday, Trump falsely claimed that his measures had succeeded in completely eradicating crime from the district.
“There’s no crime,” the president told his audience. “They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ It’s more than 87 percent — virtually nothing.”
On Sunday alone, Washington recorded a homicide, six motor vehicle thefts, two assaults with a deadly weapon, four robberies and more than 30 incidents of theft, according to The New York Times, which cited police data.
At one point in his remarks, Trump expressed frustration that domestic violence incidents that happen behind closed doors are counted as part of city-wide crime totals.
“Things that take place in the home, they call crime,” he said. “They’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime scene.”
A clip of the commander-in-chief’s remarks was widely shared on social and drew an angry response.
“Just a casual dismissal of domestic violence as a crime,” commented Republican strategist Sarah Longwell.
“One woman dies every 11 hours from domestic violence… so naturally, Trump is working overtime to say it’s not real,” another person said, while another simply posted a photoshopped image of Trump giving his speech while wearing a white vest, to caricature him as an abusive husband.
The president continues to insist that crime is out of control in many Democrat-run cities, and also sent the Guard into Los Angeles in June to help quell anti-ICE protests.
He followed his intervention in D.C. by sending ICE agents swarming into Boston on Saturday to round up more people accused of being undocumented migrants, in what is being called “Operation Patriot 2.0.”
Chicago is widely expected to be next, despite widespread local opposition, with plans to accommodate an influx of agents already underway and border czar Tom Homan suggesting on Sunday that their mission would commence this week.
