President Donald Trump’s shocking defense of a champion boxer who raped a teenage girl has resurfaced as the president faces intense scrutiny of his relationship with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
In a 1992 clip from Late Night with David Letterman being circulated online, the future president tells the show’s host that he doesn’t think Mike Tyson ought to have been sentenced to six years in jail for the rape of beauty pageant contestant Desiree Washington, who was just 18 years old at the time.
“It’s ridiculous,” Trump says, referencing the fact the crime took place late at night after Washington had been “dancing” for Tyson.
Trump then suggested that a more fitting punishment would have been for the boxer to serve less time and pay monetary restitution to “rape victims” in general.
“Mike Tyson should supply millions and millions and millions of dollars to rape victims, and I think that’s a hell of a lot better than him sitting in a jailhouse for six years,” the future president says. “Mike should serve some time and everything else, but to keep a man … here’s a woman that was dancing at his door at one o’clock in the morning. Dancing.”
A second clip from Trump’s appearance the same year on The Charlie Rose Show features him questioning Washington’s account of the crime itself, saying she “was raped perhaps, perhaps not.”
This whole interview is a window into how arrogant and narcissistic Trump is.Here, he tells Charlie Rose he thought Mike Tyson was “badly represented” in his rape case, questions the victim’s behavior, and says he isn’t sure Tyson was guilty.(Rose was later fired and in 2024,… pic.twitter.com/e5wxi56gwC
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) July 27, 2025
Both videos have resurfaced at a time the president is facing public backlash over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
The current furor kicked off after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo in July stating that Epstein’s 2019 death in police custody was a suicide and that, contrary to rumors long cherished by far-right conspiracy theorists, the late pedophile kept no “client list” of uber-wealthy co-conspirators.
Amid mounting public outcry from his base, which has accused the administration of a cover-up, Trump—who once described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”—has scrabbled to placate his supporters.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, sat down with Maxwell, who’s serving 20 years on sex trafficking charges, for an interview in July in which Maxwell reportedly said she never saw Trump do anything inappropriate. After the interview, Maxwell was transferred to a lower-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
The White House is reportedly weighing releasing the transcript of the interview.
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