The media will tell you that Tucker Carlson asked Donald Trump about homelessness in large cities and Trump said “We may intercede.” But that’s not quite what happened in this weird, scary exchange.
Neither man said the word “homeless.” Carlson asked Trump about the comparison between Japanese cities which are “clean, there’s no graffiti, no one going to the bathroom on the street” and U.S. cities which have “a major problem with, with filth.” Trump began by responding that “It’s a phenomenon that started two years ago. It’s disgraceful. I am going to maybe, and I’m looking at it very seriously, we’re doing some other things as you probably noticed, like some of the very important things that we’re doing now, but we’re looking at it very seriously.”
At this point we have “filth” as “a phenomenon that started two years ago” that Trump might intervene in. Which is interesting, since the number of homeless people in the U.S. has stayed relatively constant. He continued, claiming 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, where people are getting sick, where the people living there living in hell, too.”
There are moments where Trump does seem to be talking, in his heartless way, about homeless people, saying that “Some of them have mental problems where they don't even know they're living that way. In fact, perhaps they like living that way.” But overwhelmingly he was focused on how “They can't do that. We cannot ruin our cities. And you have people that work in those cities. They work in office buildings and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago.”
Trump repeatedly raised the prospect of government intervention. “When we 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,” he said. “They can't be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco. San Francisco ... so we're looking at it very seriously. We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. It's inappropriate.” He also alluded to an unspecified “situation when I first became president” where “We had certain areas of Washington, D.C., where that was starting to happen, and I ended it very quickly. I said, ‘You can’t do that.’’
But again, no mention of homelessness. Trump mentioned sanctuary cities. He mentioned “the liberal establishment.” But not homeless people, which means that despite all of the media reports about this as a discussion of homelessness, what it really is is a discussion of how there’s “filth” and police “getting sick just by walking the beat” and Something Must Be Done. By the Trump administration, because “the liberal establishment” that runs these cities won’t crack down and clean things up and it’s Hurting America.
This is not Trump talking about homelessness. This is Trump telling his base that New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles are places to be feared. This is Trump telling his base that, when he was elected, something in those cities changed and made them worse and scarier. This is Trump suggesting that he probably needs to in some way crack down on those cities, maybe partially take them over. This is more of Trump as dictator-in-formation, and it’s terrifying.