Trump Slams California On Homelessness, Threatens To 'Intercede'

LOS ANGELES, CA — Attributing the homeless crisis plaguing Los Angeles and California to failed liberal governance, President Donald Trump threatened to "intercede" to "get that whole thing cleaned up" this week.

However, just what he intends remained unclear.

"I don’t know that he knows what it means," responded Governor Gavin Newsom.

Newsom sarcastically told Politico it would be "encouraging" to think Trump is backing off plans to cut the nation's safety nets.

“It sounds like the president of the United States recognizes he has work to do on this issue,” Newsom said, spinning the president’s comments as “encouraging” — while rebuking Trump for proposals that would mean “decreasing the social safety net to address the reasons people are out on the streets and sidewalks in the first place,” questioning if Trump was “familiar with the tenets or details of his budget.”

Calls to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's office for a response were not immediately returned.

In an interview with Fox News, the president said the crisis began just two years ago.

"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 has often singled out the Golden State for ire since California voters overwhelmingly voted against him in 2016. But California leaders are calling for federal funding to help tackle the problem. On Monday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he plans to lead a coalition of mayors calling on Congress to pass the Ending Homelessness Act. Sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, the law would direct more than $13 billion to support the work of cities on the front lines of the homelessness crisis, deliver vital services to homeless residents and bring the unsheltered indoors, according to a statement from Garcetti's office.

Though the president took aim at the California's liberal policies, the state's economy has been booming, and it's long been a donor state that gives more in federal taxes than it receives in federal funding.

The homeless crisis plaguing California and the nation's major cities is "inappropriate," and may require federal intervention even though the federal government isn't equipped to do so, the president added.

"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."

Los Angeles is in the midst of an ambitious $1.2 billion effort to fund homeless housing programs. More than $460 million was recently dedicated to homeless encampment and sidewalk clean-ups.

"You can't have what's happening, where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat, they're getting actually very sick, where people are getting sick," Trump said.

He was referring to incidents in which a Los Angeles city employee said she contracted typhus, and in May an LAPD employee developed symptoms related to typhoid fever while working at the Central Station near Skid Row. Two other employees at the station developed symptoms consistent with the salmonella typhoid bacteria.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called on the county Public Health Department in March to develop a communicable-disease prevention and intervention plan in response to the LAPD employee's illness. The Los Angeles City Council last week allocated more than $6 million for its CARE and CARE-plus teams for clean-ups and homeless outreach services.

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."

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.