Karoline Leavitt struggled to justify President Donald Trump’s recent comments downplaying domestic violence, weaving a defense that contradicted itself within two sentences.
During an event on Monday, the president complained that crime statistics in Washington D.C. were inflated because “things that take place in the home, they call crime.”
“If a man has a little fight with the wife they say ‘this was a crime, see?’” Trump said.
“He wasn’t referring to crimes, that’s exactly the point he was making,” Leavitt said when a reporter asked her about the comments on Tuesday.
However, the press secretary immediately contradicted herself by calling the acts Trump was referring to—altercations between men and their wives—as “crimes.”
“The president is saying that these crimes will be made up and reported as a crime to undermine the great work that the federal task force is doing to reduce crime in Washington D.C.,” she added, without providing any evidence of made-up crimes.
Leavitt then lectured the White House press corps for allegedly giving the president a reason to believe that crimes are being made up.
“I think the president has every reason to believe that, given the efforts of many reporters in this room who actively seek to undermine the president and what he’s doing in our nation,” she said.
To cap off her grasping defense of the president, she told reporters that she knew what they were feeling “deep inside.”
“We all know that deep inside you all agree with this because you all live here, and I’m sure you are very grateful for the administration’s efforts to make this city, which we all reside in, much safer for ourselves and our families.”
Leavitt’s attempt to head off criticism of the president’s comments came after a wave of advocates and public officials hammered Trump for seeming to wave off the suffering incurred by victims of domestic violence.
Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono wrote on X that “Despite being a convicted felon himself, Trump apparently still doesn’t know what a ‘real crime’ is.”
Democrat Rep. Debbie Dingell, a survivor of domestic violence, told The 19th that, “We’ve been fighting for decades to remove the stigma around domestic violence, and this position from the president directly opposes those efforts.”
A CDC survey from 2022 found that more than 4 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men had experienced intimate partner violence.
The president was accused of domestic violence and sexual assault when his first wife, Ivana, filed for divorce. In her 1989 divorce deposition, described in a 1993 book, Ivana alleged that Trump tore out “fistfuls of hair” from her scalp and then raped her.
Ivana Trump later clarified that she did not want her words “to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense,” and she said in a 2015 statement that she and her ex-husband “are the best of friends.”
The president’s comments on Monday came during an event at the Museum of the Bible, where he touted the impact of federal troops in Washington. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has flexed her experience prosecuting domestic violence cases, sat next to the president as he spoke.
The president claimed on Monday that crime in the capital is down 87 percent since the federal takeover and is now “virtually nothing.” Last Monday, the union representing Washington police claimed a much smaller reduction in total crime of 21 percent.
While crime is down in the capital since Trump deployed the National Guard in August, his promises to replicate the takeover in cities such as Chicago and New York have prompted vows of resistance from Democratic mayors and governors.
When approached for comment about Leavitt’s press conference remarks, White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said: “Why hasn’t the Daily Beast covered the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska? Instead of laundering a Democrat hoax they should cover real news, but we won’t hold our breath.”
