Did Donald Trump publicly state 'Besides 14 is old enough to make your own decisions' and in what context?

1. What Trump explicitly said about “14” in the available reporting

Reporting documents that Trump has publicly called for trying minors “as young as 14” as adults while discussing youth crime in Washington, D.C., and has threatened to federalize the District if local officials don’t act ^[1]. Separate coverage notes his position that criminals “as young as 14 should be prosecuted as adults” in the broader sweep of his law‑and‑order proposals ^[2]. Those sourced items make clear his public stance on lowering the threshold for adult prosecution, but they do not reproduce the exact quoted sentence the user asked about ^{[1] [2]}.

2. The alleged quote’s provenance and limits of the evidence

The specific sentence, "Besides, 14 is old enough to make your own decisions," appears in a Threads post that frames it as a “key sentence from Trump’s ranting yesterday,” but that post is user content and lacks sourcing or a transcript citation ^[3]. Available mainstream coverage and the White House summary of his “60 Minutes” interview do not include that line or attribute it to him ^{[4] [5]}. In short: the Threads item asserts the phrase, but the other items in the file do not corroborate the exact wording ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

3. Context in which Trump discussed 14‑year‑olds (youth crime and prosecution)

Where mainstream outlets do report Trump’s remarks they place them squarely in a public‑policy context: arguments about youth crime, prosecutorial thresholds, and potential federal intervention in D.C. governance. WUSA9 reports he called for trying minors “as young as 14” as adults while warning the District it could lose home rule if it doesn’t address violent youth crime ^[1]. Audacy’s coverage similarly frames his comments as part of a crime‑policy push to prosecute younger defendants as adults ^[2]. Those articles treat “14” as a policy threshold rather than a casual rhetorical aside.

4. Fact‑checking note and contrary or missing elements

A fact‑check entry in the compilation (FactVerify) claims to address the broader allegation that “Donald Trump wants to lower the age of consent to 14,” but the snippet doesn’t provide a clear adjudication in the excerpted record here ^[6]. The available records include no mainstream, sourced transcript that matches the exact “Besides, 14 is old enough to make your own decisions” quotation; therefore that precise line is uncorroborated in current reporting (p1_s1; not found in current reporting).

5. Competing interpretations and potential implications

One interpretation supported by the articles is that Trump’s public stance is a criminal‑justice policy position advocating adult prosecution beginning at age 14 — framed as a response to alleged spikes in youth violence in D.C. ^{[1] [2]}. The Threads post frames an alleged quote as moralizing or dismissive in tone and compares it to past institutional victim‑blaming, but that is an interpretation from social content, not from the news transcripts present here ^[3]. Readers should note the difference between documented policy statements in news outlets and unattributed social posts that claim verbatim quotations.

6. What’s missing and recommended next steps to verify the exact phrase

Current reporting in this batch does not include a sourced transcript or video clip reproducing “Besides, 14 is old enough to make your own decisions” ^{[3] [4] [5]}. To confirm whether Trump actually used that wording, consult primary materials — the full transcript or video of the specific remarks (Truth Social post, press conference, interview, or rally) — or reporting that cites a primary source. If you want, I can search for the original video or transcript and for fact checks that adjudicate that exact quote.