President Trump says he is “seriously” considering tackling the blight of homelessness in major American cities — an issue that Trump curiously believes began shortly after he became president.

“It’s a phenomena that started two years ago. It’s disgraceful,” Trump told Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview that aired Monday night. “We’re looking at it very seriously because you can’t do that.”

Carlson raised the topic by noting that unlike some U.S. cities, places like Tokyo and Osaka, Japan — where the president recently traveled for the G-20 summit — are “clean.”

“There’s no graffiti. No one going to the bathroom on the street. You don’t see junkies,” Carlson said. “But New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, they’ve got a major problem with filth.”

Trump agreed.

“It’s very sad,” he said.

While the number of homeless people in the United States has remained more or less the same since 2016, it has fallen considerably in the last decade. In 2018, there were about 553,000 homeless people, according to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or nearly 100,000 fewer homeless people in the country than in 2008.

Homelessness in San Francisco and Los Angeles, however, is on the rise.

“You can’t have what’s happening — where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat,” the president said, perhaps referring to the recent report of a Los Angeles police officer who was diagnosed with typhoid fever.

“I mean, they’re getting actually very sick, where people are getting sick, where the people living there [are] living in hell too,” Trump continued. Read more

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President Trump says he is “seriously” considering tackling the blight of homelessness in major American cities — an issue that Trump curiously believes began shortly after he became president.