An important news update brought to you by President Trump: Homelessness started two years ago in our country and it is the fault of liberal states, of liberal people in sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and New York. And Seattle. Oh yes, and our president claims that it is the fault of homeless people themselves. “They like living that way.”
“We’ve never had this in our lives,” he said in a FOX news interview with Tucker Carlson last week. When asked by Carlson what we should do about it Trump responded, “Take the (homeless) people and do something.” Presumably by that, he means clear homeless people away, dispose of them out of sight. Perhaps in detention centers along the US-Mexican border. Or behind rows of doors from torn-down affordable urban housing as in the photograph above from my hometown of Richmond, Virginia. I took that photograph in 1986 on my way to my work as a nurse with homeless people.
Trump pointed to his clearing out of homeless people in Washington, DC when he moved into the White House. He claims he told people that he had leaders of the world coming to see him, the President of the United States, and “they can’t be looking at that” referring to visible poverty and homelessness in our nation’s capital.
That this revisionist history, these lies, would be laughably absurd in a different context, a different time—perhaps sometime in our hopefully brighter future—is one thing. But that wistful and wishful thinking only highlights the current dangers in this rhetoric. People believe what Trump and Carlson say. People act on what Trump and Carlson say. “Take the (homeless) people and do something” leads to vigilantism and physical attacks (and killings) against people who are or who “look homeless.”