Trump defends tweet addressing military rape

Lucy O’Brien | Contributing Writer @lucytalks2much
September 15, 2016

Donald Trump defended his 3-year-old tweet about military sexual assault during NBC’s Commander-in-Chief Forum in New York on Wednesday.

The Republican presidential candidate was asked about how he would “support all victims of sexual assault” by former Marine Corp radio operator Donald Day, whose daughter decided not to join the military due to the high rape statistics, during the forum.

“It’s a massive problem,” Trump said. “The numbers are staggering, hard to believe even, but we’re going to have to run it very tight. I at the same time want to keep the court system within the military. I don’t think it should be outside of the military, but we have to come down very, very hard on that. And your daughter is absolutely right, it is a massive problem, but we have to do something about that problem and the best thing we can do is set up a court system within the military. Right now, the court system practically doesn’t exist.”

Trump tweeted about military sexual assault in 2013, saying that such high rape statistics are to be expected when men and women are serving together. Though he received backlash from Twitter users, he defended his tweet during the forum.

“It is a correct tweet,” he said. “There are many people that think that that’s absolutely correct.”

Matt Lauer, host of the Today Show and moderator of the forum, asked Trump if women should be taken out of the military.

“No, not to kick them out, but something has to happen. Right now part of the problem is nobody gets prosecuted,” Trump responded. “You have the report of rape and nobody gets prosecuted. There are no consequences. When you have somebody that does something so evil, so bad as that, there has to be consequences for that person. You have to go after that person. Right now, nobody is doing anything. Look at the small number of results – that’s part of the problem.”

20,300 members of the military were sexually assaulted in 2014, according to ProtectOurDefenders.com. This number is composed of 9,600 female victims and 10,600 male victims. 19 percent of these cases were then prosecuted, and 7 percent of offenders were convicted. 86 percent of victims did not report the crime, and one in three people said they feared reporting would yield no results or hurt their career.           

This crime is also usually perpetrated by someone higher up on the chain of command than the victim, according to ProtectOurDefenders.com. One in seven victims were “assaulted by someone in their chain of command.” 62 percent of women who reported faced retaliation in the form of reprisals from superiors.

All members of the military on active duty are under the jurisdiction the military court system called the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), according to Lt. Col. Sheri Jones of the United States Air Force. She explains the difference between civilian court and the UCMJ in an article published on the U.S. Air Force website in 2013.    

“Only the accused in the military’s…hearing is allowed, through her attorney, to request witnesses and question them on the stand during the hearing,” she said.

The Commander-in-Chief Forum is an event sponsored by NBC News and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The forum is designed to give American citizens, and specifically members and veterans of the armed forces, insight into who would better serve as Commander In Chief if elected president. Moderator Matt Lauer spent half of the forum interviewing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and accepting audience questions, and he spent the other half doing the same for Trump.

Lauer received backlash after the forum from people claiming he went easier on Trump than he did on Clinton. The most common complaints are that he spent too much time on Clinton’s email scandal and that he didn’t fact check Trump’s false claim that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. In a Twitter poll posted by NBC News, Trump was the more favorable candidate during the Commander-in-Chief event.