President Donald Trump on Monday downplayed the severity of domestic violence crimes, saying that were it not for “things that take place in the home they call crime,” the administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., would have resulted in a bigger statistical reduction in crime.

“They said, ‘Crime’s down 87 percent.’ I 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. 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. See? So now I can’t claim 100 percent but we are. We are a safe city,” Trump said.

The president’s comments were part of a speech he delivered at the Religious Liberty Commission’s meeting at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

Domestic violence has long been recognized by the federal government as a national public health and safety crisis. A national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 4 in 10 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced physical or sexual violence or stalking by an intimate partner.

Next month marks the 25th annual Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which coincides with the 2000 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The law increased federal funding to combat domestic violence and other crimes that disproportionately affect women, recognizing the matter as a public health and safety issue, not a private domestic matter.

The federal government is by far the biggest source of funding for anti-domestic violence efforts, and since taking office, the Trump administration has sought to restrict nonprofits’ access to federal domestic violence grants. They have also laid off a top official and several teams working on the issue, threatening to destabilize domestic violence services and prevention efforts nationwide.

In a statement to The 19th, the White House said the president wasn’t “talking about or downplaying domestic violence.” 

“President Trump’s Executive Order to address crime in DC even specifically took action against domestic violence,” said Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House. The order urged the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate housing providers who don’t comply with requirements to “restrict tenants who engage in criminal activity,” including domestic violence. 

The White House also pointed out that the administration barred transgender women from women’s domestic abuse shelters, a move that advocates warn makes trans women less safe.

“While President Trump is making America safer, the Fake News is whipping up their latest hoax in real time to distract from the Administration’s tremendous results,” Jackson said. 

Some groups focused on combating domestic violence criticized the president’s comments. 

“The DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence believes that intimate partner violence is a crime and more than a ‘little fight with the wife’ as President Trump stated earlier today. Per federal and local statute, domestic violence is a crime and one that is not only a precursor to domestic violence homicides, but also a common factor in community violence, including mass shootings, where perpetrators often have a history of committing domestic violence,” said Dawn Dalton, the coalition’s executive director. 

“The idea that domestic abuse is serious and criminal is not up for debate. Words cannot take us backwards and the days of treating domestic and sexual violence as ‘private matters’ are long gone. Any attempt to minimize these crimes does not change the impact of domestic violence and cannot change the reality of crime statistics in Washington, D.C.,” said Casey Carter Swegman, director of public policy at Tahirih Justice Center.

“By reducing domestic violence to a ‘little fight,’ President Trump revives a regressive view from an era when survivors were expected to endure abuse alone, without legal protections or public support, said Susanna Saul Director, Legal Programs at Her Justice, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to women living in poverty in New York City. “This does more than trivialize domestic abuse. It emboldens abusers to increase their violence and risks undoing decades of legal and cultural progress that have made safety a community responsibility, rather than a private burden.”

Rep. Gwen Moore, a Democrat from Wisconsin who has championed legislative efforts against domestic violence, said such crimes amount to “abuse that devastates families, endangers women and children, and takes lives every single day.”

“As a survivor of domestic violence, I found President Trump’s comments today downplaying domestic violence deeply offensive and disturbing,” she said in a statement. “Trump has a long history of violence against women that makes his dismissiveness unsurprising.”

Rep. Debbie Dingell, another survivor of domestic violence, said Trump’s comments threaten to set back the clock on the national conversation around domestic violence. “We’ve been fighting for decades to remove the stigma around domestic violence, and this position from the president directly opposes those efforts,” she said. “Let me tell you, as someone who hid in a closet many times as a child, being tough on crime means keeping women and children safe in their own homes.”