President Donald Trump went into a long and confused rant about "crazy" women who spit on "good-looking" men while describing his plan for expanding the use of state mental institutions to lock up homeless people.

The answer was part of a longer interview he gave to the right-wing Daily Caller on Friday, being released in excerpts over the last few days.

"Yeah, I call it a crime free zone because we don’t play games," said Trump. "You know, I said they spit, we hit. You know, when these people — women — they’re standing up to these guys, good looking guys, and they want to do something, but they’re not allowed to. If they do, they’ll be arrested. They’ll arrest the soldiers. They had an arrest warrant out on every single soldier, if they hit back, there was an automatic arrest. So you have these people, they scream, they’re this far away, screaming."

"Some women, screaming, like crazy, they’re crazy," he continued. "And then they start spitting in the face of the guy. And these guys are just, they wouldn’t, but they can’t do it. Now they can do it. So I said, we spit– they spit, we hit. Right?"

Trump has repeatedly pushed the idea of tougher law enforcement and institutionalization against people on the street, as well as potentially creating government-run tent cities where homeless people could be rounded up and sent to all camp in one place. Experts have warned that forced institutionalization has been sharply limited by court cases in previous decades, and that government-run tent cities have generally made urban disorder worse.

All of this comes as Trump carries on with his federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., amid mounting protests from locals and concerns about civil liberties. Trump has suggested he could send troops to keep order in other cities too, with officials in Chicago vowing to resist if he moves on them.