Trump Can’t See Domestic Violence
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 10, 2025
Donald Trump’s sideswipe this week that having “a little fight with the wife” should not count as a crime was an outrageous act of misogyny.
It was not only a stupid remark defending his claim that crime is down in Washington, but part of a larger effort to demean women.
Trump argued during remarks at the Museum of the Bible in Washington that deploying National Guardsmen to the nation’s capital has left the city “crime-free, adding that offenses that “take place in the home” should not count against his record of crime reduction.
Of course, Trump is spinning madly about crime, to justify moving the military into Chicago and other cities — over crime, immigration arrests and power politics in cities run by political foes.
On its own, the “zero crime” claim is wrong, but claiming that some crimes should count while other don’t makes no sense. Plus, it takes little effort to check that robberies, assaults, thefts, even murder, continue to occur, particularly in high-crime neighborhoods where the Guard and other federal agents are not being sent in favor of optics of protecting national monuments and commercial restaurant zones. Last Sunday, there was a homicide, six motor vehicle thefts, two assaults with a deadly weapon, four robberies and more than 30 thefts, according to police statistics.
Depending on the day, that may be fewer than a month or a couple of years ago, but hardly an “87 percent” reduction, as Trump is crowing. Overall, arrests remain about the same after deployment as before. About 40 percent of federal stops are for minor infractions, and arrests are on immigration charges, not violent crime.
This is the same Donald Trump who has been found in court to be a sexual assaulter resulting in fines that a federal appeals court just upheld, the same Donald Trump who is busy this week trying to bury mentions of himself in the convicted rapist Jeffrey Epstein files, the same Donald Trump who brags that rich celebrities are entitled to grab and assault women at will.
With his daily assault on the law, Trump seems a poor choice to decide what constitutes a crime and what doesn’t.
Domestic Violence Crimes
One flaw in presidential crime stats apparently stems from domestic violence complaints, which Trump now seems ready to dismiss — and to brush aside as something other than crime. The DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence says that 47% of women and 43% of men in DC have experienced intimate partner physical violence, sexual violence and/or stalking in their lifetimes. The number of domestic violence incidents involving murder or attempted murder in the city run into several hundreds.
Anyone who has experienced or dealt with domestic violence knows it is not only a crime, but a serious social problems for which there are few good public options. Cities maintain shelter programs, but there are not enough shelter spots and sometimes less than safe.
Domestic violence most often is aimed against women, national statistics reflect. Nationally, more than half of women who are murdered each year are killed by an intimate partner. Across the country, 85% of domestic violence victims are women.
Perhaps Trump staffers should check The National Domestic Violence hotline. where they could learn that an average 24 women per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States — more than 12 million women and men over the course of a single year. Any of that strike you as a crime — as laid out in laws in 50 states?
Trump and MAGA are building a terrible record about protection of women on a variety of fronts, among them just this week once again ignoring the pleas of women sexually abused as children by Epstein and unnamed, uncharged friends.
Women as Political Targets
Trump is quick to criticize, attack, and now prosecute women foes including Lisa Cook on the Fed Board, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, all of whom happen to be Black. While he comes up with nicknames to ridicule all who speak against him, Trump is threatening to pull the US citizenship of outspoken Rosie O’Donnell and regularly attacks women journalists. So much for the Constitution.
The Pentagon’s leadership has removed women admirals and generals, leaving the military without a single female four-star officer. Defense/War Secretary Pete Hegseth has made clear he sees no combat role — and maybe little role at all — for women in the military, even as another 160 women just earned their Ranger status. Hegseth himself settled a sexual assault allegation in 2020 with a $50,000 payment.
Analysis of data shows that Trump’s campaign to dismission tens of thousands of federal employees has hit hardest at Black women. Black women had made up 12 percent of the federal work force, nearly double their share of the labor force overall and were overrepresented in targeted jobs related to diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
In health care, it is easy to conclude that Republican concern only for anti-abortion politics without understanding the consequences for mothers and pregnancy is prompting a rise in maternal illness and death. The constant here is that there are higher causes at work than the fate of women in our country.
The constant barrage by MAGA influencers including Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson on the central theme of masculinity in business and government policymaking has become more than an irritating commentary on a pluralistic America. It long has crossed into misogynistic calls to keep women out of decision-making and the workplace altogether and has sought to portray the proper image of a meek, obedient wife to manly men.
No wonder that Trump is dismissive of domestic violence as a serious problem. Doing so is part of his ever-political self-branding.
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