LOS ANGELES – President Donald Trump took aim at “liberal” Los Angeles and California political leaders as he weighed in on the homelessness issue, hinting that he may “intercede” to “get that whole thing cleaned up.”
“It’s very sad. Very sad. It’s a phenomenon that started two years ago. It’s disgraceful,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News that aired Monday night. “… I’m looking at it very seriously. We’re doing some other things, as you probably know … but we’re looking at it very seriously.”
Trump said many U.S. cities are doing well, but others run by his political opponents who have adopted sanctuary policies are not.
“They’re usually sanctuary cities run by very liberal people and the states (that) are run by very liberal people, but the thing that nobody can figure out is, do these governors or mayors, do they really think this is a positive? Do they really think this is OK? Because it’s not,” Trump said. “It’s destroying their city and it’s destroying the whole way of life. And it’s not our country. It’s not what our country’s all about.”
Trump hinted that he may somehow intervene in the crisis, although he did not give any specifics.
“We’re looking at it very seriously,” Trump said. “We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. It’s inappropriate. We have to take the people and do something. We have to do something. And you know, we’re not really equipped as a government to be doing that kind of work. That’s not really the kind of work that the government probably should be doing. We’ve never had this in our lives before in our country, and it’s not only those few cities, it’s a couple of others.”
Trump claimed during the Fox interview that homelessness was becoming a problem in Washington, D.C., when he took office, but he “ended it very quickly.”
“When you have leaders of the world coming in to see the president of the United States and they’re riding down a highway, they can’t be looking at that,” Trump said. “I really believe that it hurts our country, they can’t be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco.”
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EXAV says
@alby…
So cute. Take another person’s comments and repeat it back to them – very original.
Also, remember that recorded history began when Obama was elected.
Those pesky TRILLION dollar wars of choice, based on manipulated or downright faked intelligence that eventually led to the Great Recession were all caused by Obama.
The Republican bubble is real. Keep trying.
Alby says
Your social bubble is real. Wow, I feel so part of it.
EXAV says
@ Alby..
The ramblings of an unhinged Repube who believes recorded history began when Obama was elected. Yawn. Keep trying.
Alby says
I dont have to try with ex AVs sticking their dull teeth into local readers speaking out. If I’m in another town, I’d read the local news there and speak my point of view based on what I’ve seen there. I wasted a few sentences on you when I could of done yoga or have a cigarette or both. Thats the most I’ll try.
EXAV says
@Alby…
Is that so? Last time I looked Obama was handed a couple TRILLION dollar wars of choice against a couple paper tiger countries and an American economy in near depression. The biggest freeloaders in the U.S. are the obscenely wealthy. Socialism for the rich and cruel capitalism for anybody else.
Alby says
hence fourth EV AV. Do you shift cities everytime you disapprove of your surroundings? Or do you stick around and have the tenacity to speak your mind online or openly? Personally, I’d rather be criticized/enlightened by a current AV resident. Oh yeah and, “war of choice”? Do you honestly think that a well factioned trillion dollar+ American military is gonna put the choice of war on a Hawaiian muslim senator?
Alby says
Or, at this point of life, a Bush?
ExAV says
@ Alby..
You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for something to say. Cliche after recycled cliche.
I could have typed that for you and saved us both the time.
Modern history didn’t begin when Obama was elected.
Alby says
You’re delusional. I can count on you to make me stupified by how you put words in other peoples mouths just like you put thoughts in your head. Could you have typed that for me and saved us both the time? I think your spent.
Dan says
From the Washington Post 7/3/2019
The claim left D.C. officials baffled.
“I have no idea what the president’s talking about,” said City Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who chairs the council’s human services committee. “It sounds like he’s talking about some kind of removal of homeless people rather than providing services, which is what we do.”
A survey released in May found about 6,500 homeless people in Washington — down from 8,350 in 2016. But there is no evidence that Trump had anything to do with that decline, according to city officials.
Lies. Nothing but lies.
Tim Scott says
Not all lies. He mixes in a whole lot of pure nonsense. Like, it doesn’t even track as a statement that might be true or false, it’s more in the realm of a baby randomly sticking words together out of a fascination with hearing themselves.
ImALiberal says
I spent hours and hours on the streets dealing with the homeless population.
A great majority of the homeless population choose to be homeless due to problems such as addiction.
The problem is a component and by-product of the opioid epidemic and the enabling government who have turned a blind eye on the problem and just throws money at the situation which in turn enables the user to get free services which in turn is flooding our streets with more and more homelessness.
Look at the statistics, The more liberal of a state and/or area, the more homelessness there are.
There is a reason for this.
Alby says
I gave up on them before the obamanation screwed our country. I dont feel sorry for them anymore. they gave up on themselves by choice. Its easy to tell when someone sincerely needs help and those are the people I choose to help. The freeloading druggies made their bed to sleep on. Those that worked theyre heart off and played fair to achieve their goals in life shouldnt feel suffocated by thieving freeloading nosey idiot junkies that mock the working person. L.A. county taxpayers deserve much better. Glad to see that this issue is being observed by upper hand officials. About time.
Tim Scott says
Why do we have coverage of this idiot in our local news? I get all the Dingbat Don I can stomach from the national news services.
Jason Zink says
He is right about community’s leadership and policies being the problem. The problem in Antelope Valley is weak leadership locally and letting LA County control our Valley. The County take from AV and returns very little in resources and taxes back to AV. If we just asked HUD to have our own separate HUD District like a HUD CoC like the Cities of Long Beach, Pasadena, Glendale did, we would get direct funding from HUD and 5X more funding and local control. So simple, if they can do it – why not AV?. Google it:
https://www.lbbusinessjournal.com/dissecting-the-more-than-30-million-that-long-beach-dedicates-to-homeless-services/
AV has about the same population as Long Beach but we have double the homeless. So are we losing tens of millions in funding….the answer is yes.
Our AV”s two Congressional Reps McCarthy and Hill, could get this for our Valley in a second if both Palmdale and Lancaster request it. So simple. Remember McCarthy is 3rd most powerful member and friends to President Trump and HUD Sec. Ben Carson. And Hill is Pelosi close friend and was Homeless specialist before she became a congresswoman. She ran on this. AV Leadership is letting us down Citizen’s.
Better yet we could become our own County separate from LA. No Local Visionary Strategic Leadership plan. 3 years I have told Palmdale and Lancaster City councils about HUD CoC and nothing. The big problem is AV is the twilight zone with little common sense too connect dots to better our Valley. Strategic AV Plan, Local Control and direct funding is the answer.
How long will we allow LA to take us for stupid….as long as we act this way like a step child and cry and do nothing about it!
Happiness is a Warm Gun says
So you are not a fan of Rex’s ‘carry a gun and shoot the homeless if they rob you’ solution?
Matt says
This weekend, while walking in DTLA, I passed a condo being renovated on Saturday morning. To a man, (15-ish-year-old boy, actually), the people hard at work making this previously-condemned building into a beautiful expensive living space were short, brown-skinned, and Spanish-speaking. They were clearly from “here”, having the complexion and appearance of the people who have lived in the SoCal / Baja region for far longer than I (being tall, pale, and blond thanks to my Prussian ancestors). I’m sure I’m being presumptuous, but those men, and the men and women laboring in the fields I drive past every day, though being more native than I, may not have all the papers our government requires of them. I’d gladly give any one, or all in aggregate, a hand up. Subsidized health care to allow them to stay healthy, even on a day laborer’s wages, subsidized schools to better their children.
Also, on my walk downtown, I passed vagrants who look more like me. Young, able-bodied, white men “working hard” sitting around holding up cardboard signs with “just hungry” written in sharpie. Track marks all up and down their arms. Bolt cutters and theives’ tools in their backpacks, for supplementing the income, after the rich tourists go to bed, they get for lounging on a street corner.
Now, I don’t envy anyone else’s life. If I fell on hard times, I might turn to drugs to deal with sleeping on the hard ground every night. If we had unlimited resources, we should help both groups. But we don’t.
In reality, money spent on vagrants, no matter their citizenship status, is money pissed down the drain. Addiction is a terminal disease, with a cure rate in the low 20%, if not lower. All the money in the world (or all the job openings in the farming, construction, and fast-food industries) is not going to transform the young white man loitering with a sign–to get drug money–into the 15-year-old Latino boy cutting blocks on a stone saw–to supplement his family income.
So I, personally, am all for spending money on our population of workers, rather than our population of vagrants, citizenship status be damned. It’s just common sense to help those who are bettering our communities and contributing to our economy. Social services should only go to those who are willing to work. As for those who are making our communities worse places to live, the only help I care to give them is a bus ticket back to wherever they came from.
Homeless advocates keep massaging the numbers, to pretend it’s a local problem, but the truth is that 50% or more of our homeless population moved here from elsewhere in the last 2-5 years.
So, yeah, we need to wake up and take a clear-eyed look at what is REALLY going on in our communities.
Matt says
Ummm…you are welcome??? I’m pretty sure also that u are Trump supporter based on your name. Not much gets by me. Lol. I also think u are thanking because you think I’m saying something positive about Trump. Let me be more clear. They guy is a moron for saying homelessness is this crazy phenomenon that just began to years ago. More clear?
Hillary 2024 says
The homeless situation is really bad in Portland and Seattle.
Ron says
Wait till the diseases start running rapid.
Koo Koo Soo says
Did Trump suggest people carry concealed weapons and shoot the homeless if they rob you like Rex did?
ItsTheChristianThingToDo says
Everything can be solved by shooting people. Homelessness, over crowding, poverty, hunger, immigration, crime, land disputes, etc. You don’t like someone? Shoot them, problem solved. It’s what Jesus would have done.
ThatsMightyChristianofYou says
lol’d – perfect comment!
St. Raymond says
Is that the Gospel According to Rex?
Dr. Koo Koo says
It is embarrassing that our mayor Rex suggested that people break the law and carry weapons on account of some phony crisis he made up. We don’t have a homeless robbing people problem. We have a homeless problem because Rex and his administration closed the homeless shelter even after the county gave us a million dollars. His solution of bulldozing encampments and shooting the homeless if they rob you shows the limitations of his mind. Maybe that scuffle in Denny’s years ago really did some damage.
Magnetlady says
CA used to be the ”Golden State”, now our cities are riddled with 58,000 Homeless people in L.A. County alone! San Francisco is a ”pothole” for needles, feces, trash everywhere & homelessness… Where did the money go from Measure H (?) that passed 3 yrs ago to assist & build shelters for the homeless? Most likely, that money will go to the ”Millions” L.A. County will use to help ILLEGALS from being deported! It’s to the point that people are tired of the ”LIBERAL AGENDA”. from Straws to Medical care for Illegals!! Too many people are EXITING CA due to their liberal policies..
Alexis says
Trump claimed during the Fox interview, homelessness was becoming a problem in Washington, D.C., when he took office, but he “ended it very quickly.” Really? I used to live there, and spent much time at Children’s Hospital in D.C., and I witnessed the horrible homeless situation. In fact here was a popular homeless advocate than ran the shelter they had there, and he became so desperate about nothing being done that he hung himself. A good man that couldn’t take it anymore. It’s still a place of despair, and the potholes are epic!
Trump 2020 says
I could be wrong here but what you are stating here is that this was during the Obama era……… Correct???
ItWasThatEasy says
Yup. Obama era. No homeless people here now. No sir. None at all. Problem solved. Yay Trump.
Alexis says
No.
Matt says
Sometimes my memory slips, but I’m pretty sure there were homeless people for a little while longer than the last two years.
Trump 2020 says
Thank you Matt