‘Little fight with the wife’: Trump trivialises domestic violence amid crime crackdown

Washington: US President Donald Trump trivialised domestic violence and implied it should not be considered a crime while lauding his deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, in a speech about religious freedom.

It came as an appeals court in New York upheld a 2024 jury verdict compelling Trump to pay $US83.3 million ($126.5 million) in damages for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after denying her claim that he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

Speaking to the White House Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, Trump repeated his false claims that crime in the capital was now non-existent after he launched a federal takeover in August and deployed National Guard troops.

He also insinuated domestic violence incidents were being wrongly included in crime statistics to make his crackdown on street violence look less successful.

“There’s no crime,” Trump said. “They say crime’s down 87 per cent. I said, ‘No, no, no, it’s more than 87 per cent’. [It’s] virtually nothing, and much lesser things, things that take place in the home, they call crime. 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, see’ – so now I can’t claim 100 per cent [crime reduction]. But we are a safe city. You can walk to a restaurant, you can walk to the White House.”

There were a few murmurs of laughter from the audience as Trump spoke. Domestic violence groups have been contacted for comment.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson noted Trump’s executive order to address crime in Washington directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate non-compliance with crime prevention initiatives, including restrictions on tenants engaged in domestic violence.

“Of course, the president wasn’t talking about or downplaying domestic violence,” she said. “Any fake news hacks trying to use this as a political cudgel against the president are doing a great service to actual domestic abusers and criminals around the country.”

Metropolitan Police Department statistics show crime has fallen substantially since Trump’s crackdown began a month ago, but it still occurs – including acts of violence, vehicle theft and homicides.

Over the past two weeks, there have been three homicides, 38 incidents of assault with a dangerous weapon, five sexual assaults and 48 robberies, along with 24 burglaries and 101 motor vehicle thefts.

Trump’s intervention has worked, but not to the extreme extent he claims. Washington’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser said the surge of federal officers to DC’s streets has had a “significant” impact, including an 87 per cent reduction in carjackings compared to the same 20-day period the year before.

Trump is now weighing sending the National Guard to other US cities, such as Chicago and Baltimore – though that is legally much more fraught as they are controlled by state governments, unlike the capital.

He noted on social media that there were another six homicides in Chicago on the weekend, with a further 12 people wounded in shootings, taking the total number shot and killed over the past few weeks to 50.

“I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Only the criminals will be hurt! We can move fast and stop this madness.”

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court upheld the January 2024 jury verdict compelling Trump to pay Carroll $US83.3 million in damages over repeated social media attacks and public statements against her after she accused him of sexual assault.

The judges rejected Trump’s argument that the punitive damages were excessive and that he was entitled to presidential immunity in the case after the Supreme Court expanded the concept in a July 2024 ruling.

They found Trump’s “extraordinary and unprecedented” broadsides against Carroll, now 81, justified the steep award given “the unique and egregious facts of this case”.

An initial jury had in May 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape as defined under New York law. Trump repeatedly denied the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book. He also said Carroll was “not my type”.

In a statement, lawyers for Trump called for “an immediate end to the political weaponisation of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.”

The case will likely head to the Supreme Court.

With AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.