When Trump says, ‘If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty,’ he isn’t talking about dust or grime. He’s talking about homeless people.
DC orders homeless to vacate as Trump crime crackdown intensifies
D.C. officials gave homeless residents notice to vacate their encampments as part of President Donald Trump’s push to reduce crime and homelessness.
Trump is deploying the National Guard to D.C., claiming it’s to combat crime, despite crime rates being at a 30-year low.Trump is really just targeting the homeless population and using the National Guard for aesthetic purposes.A past encounter with a homeless man in Phoenix highlights his generosity and contrasts with Trump’s lack of empathy.
The way Donald Trump talks about Washington, D.C., and the disgust he has for the poor souls he sees through the window of his limousine as he is heading to the golf course, made me think of Mr. Lucky, a man with special powers I met while he was living on the streets of Phoenix in the early 1990s.
On Aug. 10, Trump posted photographs of homeless people that were taken while his motorcade headed from the White House to Trump National Golf Club in Virginia.
He also wrote, “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” as if individuals living on the street spend a lot of time on social media.
Trump is using the National Guard as his personal mercenary force to occupy the capital city.
He said, “We’re going to make it beautiful again. We’re going to fix it with crime, and we’re going to also, as we’re doing that, we’re going to start doing things that we know how to do, that I know how to do better than anybody, I guess, because of my experience from previous life.”
Trump wages war on homeless people, not crime
Violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in more than 30 years.
Trump didn’t send the National Guard into Washington to stop crime. He sent in the troops to wage war on homeless people.
Trump just doesn’t like the view from his limousine.
At a news conference Trump said, “When you walk into a restaurant and you see a dirty front door, don’t go in. Because if the front door is dirty, the kitchen is dirty also. Same thing with the capital. If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don’t respect us.”
When Trump says our capital is dirty, he isn’t talking about dust or grime. He’s talking about homeless people. And he’s not talking about them with concern or empathy.
If that were true, he would have occupied Washington with an army of social workers.
How would he have viewed Phoenix’s Mr. Lucky?
One day in the early 1990s, I was approached on the street in downtown Phoenix by a tall man, gangly as a puppet left out in the rain, wearing oversized, faded clothes.
He smiled, said hello, and politely asked if I could spare some change. I gave him what I had in my pocket, 57 cents. He put the two quarters and the nickel in his pocket and kept the two pennies in his hand.
In a column I wrote about the encounter, I quoted him saying, “Pennies. Marvelous! Mr. Lucky always needs pennies. They call me Mr. Lucky, they do. Always did call me Mr. Lucky. For some time now. Always did.”
As he walked away, the man very carefully placed one penny on the top of a trash container and another near the lid of a mailbox, places where a passerby was bound to see them.
I know from our encounter who was the richer man
If so, that person might pick one up and silently recite a verse learned as a child, something Mr. Lucky mumbled to himself as he ambled along: Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.
I doubt Trump would be able to see beyond the outward appearance of such a man. To see his humanity.
The country is worse off for that.
To Trump — and many like him — Mr. Lucky would be just another pitiful soul wandering a city. A panhandler. An eyesore.
Then again, all I could give him was the change in my pocket.
While he, the richer man, dispensed … good fortune.
Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.
Like this column? Get more opinions in your email inbox by signing up for our free opinions newsletter, which publishes Monday through Friday.
