Donald Trump is standing by a tweet he wrote in which he blamed thousands of sexual assaults in the military on men and women serving together.
"Well, it is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that's absolutely correct," Trump said when asked at a town hall forum by moderator Matt Lauer on Wednesday night about a tweet he posted in 2013.
Three years ago, Trump tweeted: "26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military_only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?"
Lauer asked whether that meant that men and women should not serve together.
"Well, it's happening, right? And since then it's gotten worse," Trump responded. "Not take them out, but something has to happen. Right now part of the problem is nobody gets prosecuted.... You have the report of rape and nobody gets prosecuted. There are no consequences."
In 2014, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel put forth initiatives designed to address rape and other sexual assaults in the military. A Pentagon report estimated that 19,000 troops were victims of "unwanted sexual contact"_down from an estimated 26,000 two years earlier.
Trump appeared with Lauer at a forum sponsored by NBC News in New York.
