President Donald Trump downplayed the severity of domestic violence during a speech on religious freedom at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
“They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ I said, no, no, no — it’s more than 87 percent, virtually nothing. And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. 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,” Trump explained to an audience who had apparently come expecting scripture and instead got the pilot episode of Mad Men.
The comment was delivered at a meeting of the Religious Liberty Commission, a group whose mission statement did not originally include “rebranding domestic violence as wholesome Christian bonding,” but now might have to reconsider its copy.
Domestic violence, often recognized by doctors, law enforcement, and anyone who has spoken to a woman in the past 50 years as a public health crisis, was reframed by Trump as just another harmless family squabble. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rudely ignoring the former president’s theological expertise, reports that 4 in 10 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced intimate partner violence — numbers that make “little fights” sound less like marital banter and more like a pandemic.
Next month marks the 25th anniversary of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a milestone Trump helpfully commemorated by redefining domestic assault as a minor inconvenience comparable to misplacing the TV remote. The event coincides with the 2000 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, legislation that increased federal funding for domestic violence prevention, which the Trump administration later attempted to restrict because, according to officials, shelters for abused women “weren’t demonstrating sufficient loyalty to the brand.”
Since taking office, Trump’s administration worked diligently to remind survivors of abuse that while they might have bruises, they did not have access to federal grants. The White House not only laid off top domestic violence officials but also quietly dismantled teams working on prevention efforts, in what aides described as “a bold step toward empowering men to finally win arguments without interference from the nanny state.”
Critics argue that using religious liberty as a backdrop for minimizing violence against women is both ironic and insulting, but supporters of Trump insist that his words were simply “taken out of biblical context.” According to these defenders, Jesus may have multiplied fish and bread, but Trump multiplied excuses.
As one advocacy group noted dryly: “We’re still waiting for someone to explain how ‘a little fight with the wife’ squares with either the law or the Gospel of Matthew.”
Trump, however, seemed unbothered. After all, in his view, what’s the point of religious freedom if not the freedom to decide which crimes count as sins and which ones count as “family values”?
