During NBC’s Commander-in-Chief Forum on Wednesday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump argued that sexual assault in the military should be handled in a military court system and defended a tweet where, after pointing to the number of unreported military sexual assaults compared to the number of convictions, he asked, “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”
Trump said that sexual assault in the military is “a massive problem.” He stated, “[W]e’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. … 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. It takes too long.”
He was then asked about his tweet from 2013 where he said, “26,000 unreported sexual assults [sic] in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”
Trump responded, “Well, it is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that that’s absolutely correct. And we need to have a –.”
Host Matt Lauer then cut in to ask, “So, this should should have been expected? And does that mean the only way to fix it is take women out of the military?”
Trump responded, “Well, it’s happening, and by the way, since then, it’s gotten worse. No, not to kick them out, but something has to be — happen. You — right now, part of the problem is, nobody gets prosecuted. You have reported…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 consequence for that person. You have to go after that person. Right now, nobody’s doing anything. Look at the small number of results. I mean, that’s part of the problem.”
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