How Trump Bungled His Response To Sexual Assault In The Military

Donald Trump made waves Wednesday night at NBC News’ Commander-in-Chief forum when he got some facts wrong about sexual assault in the military.

Matt Lauer, who moderated the event, confronted Trump with a tweet he sent in 2013 that seemed to blame women for the staggering numbers on sexual assault in the military:

26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013

Trump said he stood by the tweet and added that it is a “correct tweet.”

“Well, it’s happening, right?” Trump continued, according to a transcript. “And, by the way, since then, it’s gotten worse. No, not to take them out, but something has to be happen. Right now, part of the problem is nobody gets prosecuted. You have reported and—the gentleman can tell you, you have the report of rape and nobody gets prosecuted. There are no consequence.”

It’s worth noting that in the years since Trump’s tweet, the numbers have changed—but, contrary to Trump’s suggestion, they have not gotten worse. According to a 2014 RAND study, an estimated 20,300 active-component U.S. military personnel said they experienced a sexual assault in the past year.

Andrew Morral, senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation and co-author of the think tank’s study, disputed the notion that having women in combat roles increases sexual assault, as Trump suggested.

“If having women and men working together is what causes sexual assaults, you might expect those service branches with more women to have the highest rates of sexual assault,” Morral wrote in an email to TPM. “In fact, we found the opposite. The Air Force has a higher percentage of women than any other service in the Department of Defense, but it has the lowest rates of sexual assault, for men and women.”

Morral also pointed out that although women in the service are at a higher risk of being assaulted, men actually are assaulted in higher numbers in the military because of there are many more of them enlisted. An estimated 1 percent of men in the military experience sexual assault, according to the RAND study. They are also less likely to report the assault.

A perceived attraction between men and women, especially in close quarters, isn’t clearly to blame for the assaults either, Morral said. Instead, much of the assaults, especially those men commit against other men, is part of “hazing” or a show of dominance.

“It’s not correct that sexual assaults are an inevitable consequence of the sexual interest that occurs between people or between people of the opposite sex,” Morral said. “Many of these assaults in the military occur as part of hazing rituals or as a way of humiliating or demeaning a service member, rather than to gratify anyone’s sexual interest. Military law recognizes this by stipulating that sexual assaults can either be to gratify a sexual impulse or to humiliate or demean. We know that many military assaults are for purposes of humiliation, because we asked service members what their assailant’s intentions appeared to be.”

A veteran in the audience at NBC’s forum, who said his daughter had decided not to join the military because of a high rate of sexual assault, also asked Trump what he would do to combat it as commander-in-chief. Trump replied, confusingly, that he would set up a court system within the military to deal with sexual assault internally.

“The best thing we can do is set up a court system within the military,” Trump said, according to a transcript. “Right now, the court system practically doesn’t exist. It takes too long.”

Of course, the military courts do exist, but many activists cite them as a problem in current efforts to prosecute assailants in the service. If an assault is reported and a case is tried, the current military court system gives commanding officers free rein to affect a trial, including to stop an investigation, reduce a sentence or even set aside a conviction, according to a report by PBS.

This can present serious problems, as the Department of Defense’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military for 2015 found that supervisors and unit leaders were responsible for sexual harassment and gender discrimination 60 percent of the time.

Trump has not addressed the backlash to his most recent comments on sexual assault in the military. When his previous comments on the matter made waves in 2013, he had this to say to his haters on Twitter (well, Tweetlonger).

“For all of the morons who have been complaining about my comment on sexual assault & rape in the military, don’t you see that it was asked as a question, with a question mark at the end of the sentence!” Trump wrote. “In other words, it wasn’t made as a statement, but rather as a question. I wanted your views. Many of the generals and military officials were not in favor of the male/female mix. What do you think of that?”

This time around, if history is any guide, he may decide to turn to “the best people” to help him nail down specific policy prescriptions, like the 88 retired generals and admirals who endorsed him this week. As the The Daily Beast reported, one of those officials, whom the publication didn’t identify, has relevant experience: representing the Navy in a case stemming from the 35th Annual Tailhook Association Symposium, an event where Navy officers sexually assaulted 83 women and seven men in 1991.

Correction: The initial version of this post erroneously stated that 34 percent of men in the military had been sexually assaulted in the past year, according to the 2014 RAND study. The study actually found 1 percent of men in the military had been sexually assaulted in the past year. We regret the error.