A desperate Trump downplays domestic violence
The government has taken great strides to address intimate partner violence as a public health and safety crisis. But the man at the top can't take it seriously.
So desperate is President Donald Trump to prove that the administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., has resulted in the wholesale elimination of crime, he now claims domestic violence is wrecking his near-perfect record.
In comments Monday at a convening of the White House Religious Liberty Commission, where religious leaders gathered in D.C.’s Museum of the Bible, the president described intimate partner abuse as “lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime.” And went on to gripe, “You know, 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 percent but we are.” (A reporter in the room said the remarks drew chuckles from the crowd.)
For more than 40 years, the federal government has taken great strides to acknowledge and approach domestic violence as a public health and safety crisis. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2000—the historically bipartisan federal law, first passed in 1994 and one of President Joe Biden’s legacies as a U.S. senator. Over the years, it has been leveraged to deploy funding for legal and other critical assistance for victims in myriad communities. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which will be recognized on college campuses and in localities across the country with educational events and fundraisers; in New York, the Empire State Building and other monuments will be lit in purple.
The statistics on intimate partner violence are chilling and point to enduring crisis. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 12 million people in the United States are affected every year, the vast majority women. A national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4 of 10 women have experienced physical or sexual violence or stalking by a partner. An average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, stalking, or physical violence by a partner—with 1 in 4 women experiencing “severe” physical violence.
Absurdly dismissive comments like those uttered on Monday only fan the flames. “President Trump revives a regressive view from an era when survivors were expected to endure abuse alone, without legal protections or public support,” remarked Susanna Saul of Her Justice, a New York City-based legal services organization. “This does more than trivialize domestic abuse. It emboldens abusers to increase their violence and risks undoing decades of legal and cultural progress that have made safety a community responsibility, rather than a private burden.”
A spokesperson for the White House responded predictably: “Of course the President wasn’t talking about or downplaying domestic violence—and 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.”
Actual abusers? Not so ironically, also on Monday, a federal appeals court unanimously upheld the $83.3 million judgment awarded to E. Jean Carroll, who sued Trump defamation about a sexual assault in a Manhattan department store dressing room several decades ago. Monday also heralded breaking news reported by the Wall Street Journal: Congress has its hands on a “Birthday Book” compiled for Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday, full of crude, lewd commentary about girls and women, including a hand-drawn outline of a women’s body with what appears to be Trump’s signature. (He denies it.)
And, of course, nearly nine years ago, we all heard Trump’s hot mic Access Hollywood tape when it went viral. Even kids today know the president subscribes to the belief that if you are a man, you can do anything to a woman, her body is yours for the grabbing.
The White House response disregards the administration’s own executive orders and policies that further victimize and cut resources for survivors of domestic violence. For example, earlier this year the Department of Justice moved to restrict support to domestic violence non-profits by shifting permissible priorities and frameworks for federally funded programs; for example, grantees are no longer allowed to spend money on “activities that frame domestic violence or sexual assault as systemic social justice issues.” Applications currently listed on DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women website name the No. 1 priority for potential grantees as a focus on “combat[ting] human trafficking and transnational crime, particularly crimes linked to illegal immigration and cartel operations.”
As with all the projecting the administration does, let’s be clear that when it comes to addressing domestic violence, by definition the call is coming from inside the house.
And when it comes to Trump’s own history of words and deeds, there is absolutely nothing that would assure me he takes women’s safety seriously—whether in the privacy of her own house or in the White House. This is not fake news. It is old news.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.
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The issue that Trump wants to downplay and dismiss domestic violence is no great surprise; by now we all know who and what he is...at least anyone who has been paying attention to his antics does. To me the bigger issue is the religious leaders that sit there and listen to his rhetoric with no rebukes or challenges. What kind of religion do they practice that approves of behavior such as his? And, how can they call themselves real leaders if all they do is follow Trump around like his personal lackeys, rubber stamping everything he says and does? Are these leaders really content to 'lead their flocks' down Trump's path of immorality, cruelty, and destruction? Domestic violence is NOT a statistic to be thrown about in speeches for political posturing, it is a real problem that needs to be properly identified and dealt with in every case...we need to call it what it is. And, we need to call Trump what he is as well...a misogynistic, self-serving, egomaniacal, dictator.
#MeToo was not just a slogan or a fad. Ask any woman in this country if she has ever been sexually harassed or abused. Ask any one of us. We all have more than one story to tell, and we don't expect to get millions of dollars for it. But these days, we do expect to be heard and--oh, yes--believed.