Donald Trump Downplays Domestic Violence as a ‘Lesser’ Crime During Bible Museum Speech

President Donald Trump is diminishing domestic violence incidents as real crimes.

During a speech at the Museum of the Bible, the president boasted about violent crime levels decreasing in Washington, D.C. since he deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital. The only remaining crimes, he said, were incidents of domestic violence — “little fights” within the home that, in Trump’s words, are preventing his perfect crime improvement data.

“There’s no crime. They said crime’s down 87 percent,” Trump said. “They 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,’ ” the president continued. “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.’ So now I can’t claim 100 percent.”

Throughout his speech, Trump emphasized Washington, D.C. as “one of the most violent” cities in the country, and that his deployment of troops rapidly made it safe because residents can walk to various destinations around the city.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has downplayed the severity of domestic violence and its perpetrators.

Most recently, Attorney General Pam Bondi restored actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights after losing them in a 2011 conviction. Gibson, a vocal Trump supporter and one of the president’s new “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, was found guilty of misdemeanor domestic violence regarding an incident with his then-girlfriend and their child one year earlier.

The restoration of Gibson’s gun rights was a controversial decision in the months leading up to it. Department of Justice pardon attorney Elizabeth G. Oyer was reportedly asked to recommend Gibson’s gun rights be restored, though she told The New York Times she didn’t feel comfortable doing so.

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Shortly after she declined to do so, she was fired. The Trump administration denied any link between Oyer’s resistance and her termination.

“There are real consequences that flow from people who have a history of domestic violence being in possession of firearms,” Oyer said, per the Times. “This isn’t political — this is a safety issue.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.