An old tweet in which Donanld Trump suggests sexual assault in the military is just what should be expected when male and female troops are “mixed” together has recently surfaced. Screenshots of it are floating around social media, and people are wondering whether it’s real, or part of a smear campaign against the Republican presidential hopeful.

The short answer is, yes, the tweet is real. It comes from May, 2013, and was followed up by several further tweets, including one addressed to “morons” who responded less than favorably.

Here’s the tweet that’s going around:

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

Note: judging from Trump’s further tweets and actual statistics, he presumably meant 26,000 reported rather than unreported rape and sexual assault cases.

Along with images of the tweet itself, a number of response images are circulating, such as this one.

It isn’t actually the first in the series, which was a response to the arrest of Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Krusinski, who, tasked with leading the Air Force’s anti-sexual assault unit, faced charges himself for sexual battery. Reuters covers that here.

The same morning in 2013, before the tweet that is getting attention currently went up, Trump posted this.

26,000 sexual assaults or rapes reported in military last year-and that is just the number that is reported (many do not want to report). — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2013

Later, Trump used the Twitlonger service — a site that allows one to post longer messages to Twitter — to add context to his statement, and insult anyone who had disagreed or complained about the original sentiment. The additional context, however, was essentially to distance himself from the sentiment by pointing out that it closed in a question mark, and to say that he was trying to gather other opinions.

“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! 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?”

He went on to add that military generals agree with him, saying that they knew in advance that allowing female troops to serve alongside males would create an environment of abuse and sexual assault.

Many generals and military leaders are now saying “I told you so!” They say this will have big impact on military strength & national sec. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2013

He further defended the statements by explaining that he was just trying to “stimulate debate.”

Wow, I love stimulating debate and driving certain people crazy-the Generals were forced to do something they didn’t want to do (not me). — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2013

He also linked to an Instagram photo of himself at New York Military Academy.

“See, I can be very military. High rank!”

According to Politico, though Trump never served in any branch of the military, he credits that time in Military Academy with granting him, “…more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

As for questions of whether the sexual assault tweet was real, it should also be noted that numerous outlets, Feministing, for one, reported and covered it at the time.

Clearly the tweets have resurfaced now, three years later, due to Trump’s presidential campaign. However, they are not falsified or exaggerated. Trump’s views may or may not differ today from what he expressed three years ago, but the words are his. Donald Trump’s sexual assault tweet does exist, was penned by him, and defended by him, and gives every appearance of supporting the idea that rape and sexual assault are reasonable expectations when male and female soldiers work side-by-side.

[Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]