The sympathetic response made no mention of accusers or victims of sexual harassment or abuse, or the professional or personal harm that can come to those — usually women — who come forward.

The president also said: ‘‘Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone.’’

WASHINGTON — President Trump appeared to be coming to the defense of men accused of domestic abuse or other sexual misconduct, asking in a Saturday morning Twitter post, ‘‘Is there no such thing any longer as due process?’’


Saturday’s tweet follows spousal abuse allegations against two Trump aides that roiled the White House last week. Both men left their posts despite denying the allegations of physical and emotional abuse from former wives.

Trump did not mention the aides by name, but the tweet seemed to respond directly to the departure Wednesday of staff secretary Rob Porter, a Belmont, Mass., native and Harvard graduate, whose two former wives had publicly detailed abuse.

On Friday another aide, speechwriter David Sorensen, resigned after his former wife claimed he was violent and emotionally abusive. Sorensen said he is innocent but was leaving to avoid bringing controversy on the White House. Published announcements for both his first and second weddings stated that Sorensen’s mother is from Orleans, Mass., and that he graduated from Barnstable High School.

Trump’s message also appeared to be a response to the larger national reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse of power, which has seen victims, mostly women, come forward to accuse dozens of prominent men in business, politics, entertainment, and other realms.

Trump has said almost nothing previously about the ‘‘me too’’ movement, which has led to a reexamination of power dynamics and expectations for men and women in the workplace.


Casino mogul Steve Wynn, a prominent Republican donor and Trump friend, is among the powerful men to lose their jobs over such allegations. Wynn denies any harassment or abuse.

Trump has previously defended or sympathized with other men who were accused of abuse, including conservative media titan Roger Ailes and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Trump questioned the motives of some accusers of Ailes, who was ousted as chief executive of Fox News in 2016.

‘‘I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining — I know how much he’s helped them, and even recently,’’ Trump said on NBC’s ‘‘Meet The Press’’ in July 2016.

‘‘And then they write books that are fairly recently released, and they say wonderful things about him. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying these horrible things about him,’’ Trump said. ‘‘It’s very sad because he’s a very good person. I’ve always found him to be just a very, very good person.’’

Trump said much the same about Porter in remarks Friday, in which he praised Porter’s job performance.

‘‘We certainly wish him well. It’s obviously a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House and hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him,’’ Trump said. ‘‘It was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly he’s also very sad.’’

Porter, whose title was staff secretary, controlled material coming to the president and was frequently at Trump’s side.


Trump himself has had to deny accusations from more than a dozen women that he has sexually abused them or behaved inappropriately.

In a separate development Saturday, Trump accused Democrats of playing politics with classified information, asserting that their memo countering GOP allegations about the FBI’s Russia inquiry was a trap meant to ‘‘blame the White House for lack of transparency.’’

The White House notified the House Intelligence Committee on Friday that Trump was ‘‘unable’’ to declassify the Democratic memo. White House counsel Don McGahn said in a letter to the committee that the memo contains ‘‘numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages’’ and asked the panel to revise it with the help of the Justice Department.

He said Trump was still ‘‘inclined’’ to release the memo if revisions are made.

The president’s rejection of the Democratic memo was in contrast to his enthusiastic embrace of releasing the Republican document, which accuses the FBI and Justice Department of abusing their surveillance powers in obtaining a secret warrant to monitor former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

The Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, California Representative Adam Schiff, criticized Trump for treating the two documents differently, saying the president is now seeking revisions by the same committee that produced the original Republican memo.