Editorial: More Than a “Little Fight With the Wife” - The DV Walking Wounded:

I am a very patriotic person and I love my country. I also respect the office of the President of the United States — fervently, even though I may not always agree with the person holding that office. September 8, 2025 was one of those days. I cannot convey how annoyed I am with what was stated by President Trump. I felt that grief feeling in my chest after I heard his words, as if someone was physically squeezing mye heart…I have included the excerpt of that speech at the bottom of this post, for your disenchantment…enjoy!

On September 8, 2025, during a speech at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump boasted that violent crime in the city had dropped by “87 percent,” calling it “virtually nothing.” But then he added:

“And much lesser things, things that take place in the home, they call ‘crime.’ You know, 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.”
SOURCES: People.com The Washington Post The Daily Beast

These words were intended to diminish domestic violence as something too minor or private to be counted among real crimes. But for survivors, such rhetoric isn’t just dismissive—it’s deeply invalidating and emotionally corrosive.

Why This Language Hurts Survivors

1. It Minimizes Traumatic Experiences

Calling domestic violence a “little fight with the wife” sanitizes physically and emotionally abusive behavior. To survivors who have endured manipulation, fear, or violence from a partner, that phrasing can feel like their pain is being erased or reduced to trivial spousal disharmony. I realize that he may have been speaking of murder and grand larceny, but DV can lead to murder — as an escalation crime.

2. It Undermines Legal Legitimacy

Suggesting that domestic violence should be excluded from crime statistics—or treated as a “lesser” offense—is chilling. As the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence points out, intimate partner violence is bona fide crime—both in law and its devastating real-world consequences. SOURCES: The 19th The Washington Post The Times of India.

3. It Revives Outdated, Harmful Beliefs

We’ve fought to dismantle archaic ideas that abuse inside the home isn’t society’s concern. Yet equating abuse with minor marital scuffles harks back to those regressive views. As a legal expert put it, reducing domestic violence to a “little fight” “revives a regressive view from an era when survivors were expected to endure abuse alone.” SOURCES: The 19th The Washington Post.

4. It Emboldens Abusers, While Silences Survivors

When leaders minimize violence within homes, they send a signal that domestic abuse is acceptable or inconsequential. That emboldens perpetrators, while discouraging victims from coming forward—even though we know those cases are heavily underreported. SOURCES: The Washington Post The Daily Beast.

5. It Dismisses the Broader Impact

We don’t just minimize a single incident by such language—we diminish the ripple effects: trauma, lost trust, generational harm. Domestic violence is a public health crisis: around 41% of women and 26% of men in the U.S. experience intimate partner violence in their lives. SOURCE: Wikipedia.

A Survivor’s Voice

Although I cannot speak for all survivors, many reactions echo this sentiment:

A survivor on social media wrote: “Oh sure, just a ‘little fight’. Tell that to the millions of survivors living with broken homes, trauma, and fear.”
SOURCE: The Daily Beast

This anger and frustration is not an overreaction—it’s grief, pain, and resilience being put into words. Very. Telling.

Final Thoughts

When public figures trivialize domestic violence with phrases like “a little fight with the wife,” they participate in the very culture of denial that survivors have spent decades fighting to dismantle. Words matter—especially from positions of power. They shape what we acknowledge as real, dangerous, and unacceptable. This does NOT strengthen our fight, folks. First, disruption in government funding for DV organizations at the beginning of the year, and now minimizing our experiences. I am nearly 8 years out of domestic abuse and I am STILL dealing with the fallout of what happened to me and my family. This has NOT been a little thing, sir — NOT. AT. ALL. That wasn’t a “little fight with the wife”…no, he attempted to “unalive” me. After he was finally sentenced to six months of house arrest, for aggravated assault in front of a minor (ironically, NOT attempted murder). After my Abuser postponed the inevitable court hearing for over 18 months (and $25,000 in lawyer fees later — ha, ha!) the prosecutor took me aside and told me: “I’ll deny this if you tell anyone, but you were more valuable dead than alive to the State [of Indiana]. Go figure.” Yeah, go figure. How dare I survive.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available: