President Donald Trump continues to act like he knows what he’s doing in the White House but spoiler alert: he’s out of touch with the cold, hard facts of the current situation in America. During an interview he did with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, he seemed to cast homelessness in the United States as a liberal plot against him, casting the issue as a problem just in liberal cities and claiming — incorrectly, obviously — that it only became a big issue in the last two years since he took office.
Carlson led the president into the topic, asking why major cities supposedly have a major problem with “filth” as if Trump is a one-stop shop for all life’s burning questions. Trump told the host:
‘It’s a phenomena that started two years ago. It’s disgraceful… We’re looking at it very seriously because you can’t do that. You can’t have what’s happening where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat. I mean they’re getting actually very sick… The people living there are living in hell too… This is the liberal establishment. This is what I’m fighting… We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. Now, we have to take the people and do something.’
What on earth is the president talking about?
Watch:
Unsurprisingly, Carlson did not even attempt to counter Trump’s delirious rambling. At first run-through, this seems on par with some of his most infamously outlandish past commentary, like that wind turbines supposedly cause cancer — somehow. Spoiler: they do not, and in this case — no, Mr. President, homelessness and dirt in the streets of major American cities is not a secret conspiracy against you.
He went on to ramble to Carlson about homeless people with “mental problems” who supposedly “like living that way,” and he also claimed that in some parts of D.C., the issue he’s talking about began to rear its head towards the beginning of his time in office but he said “you can’t do that” and voila — whatever this secret conspiratorial dirt was went away. Trump claimed that “we’ve never had this in our lives before in this country” but in most of the United States, the overall number of homeless people has gone down since 2007. Only in a few areas has the number ticked upward, including New York — and South Dakota, hardly a bastion of the “liberal establishment.”
Still, Trump eventually even tried to tie the issue to immigrants in the United States, as if they’re the only ones who are homeless and dirty and so on.
The president’s latest fumble of a basic issue isn’t likely to erode support from his base — they’ve stuck with him this long, after all. However, heading into the 2020 election, it indicates exactly where the president’s priorities are and what four more years of his “leadership” would look like. Those years would be packed with more and more serving of the president’s ego, even as Americans suffer and could use some real help that doesn’t center on whether the situation makes Trump look bad or good.
Featured Image via screenshot
