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President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he had ordered Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to “clean up all of the unsightly homeless encampments” in the city.
“We have notified the Mayor of Washington, D.C., that she must clean up all of the unsightly homeless encampments in the City, specifically including the ones outside of the State Department, and near the White House,” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post, adding:
If she is not capable of doing so, we will be forced to do it for her! Washington, D.C. must become CLEAN and SAFE! We want to be proud of our Great Capital again. Thank you Mayor Bowser for your efforts on behalf of the Citizens of our Country. Hopefully you will be successful!
In January, Bowser told MSNBC she had had a “candid” and “forward-looking” meeting with Trump in the lead-up to his inauguration.
“The city of Washington, D.C., the capital city, has a different relationship with the president of the United States than any other city in America,” she said. “We’re proud that we’re the nation’s capital. We are host to the federal government. We’re the host of grand events that show people what the United States of America is. And I have had the privilege now to work — This will be my third transition with the president and the second with Donald Trump.”
Bowser revealed, “I spoke with him at Mar-a-Lago, where he’s handling his transition, and I would characterize it as a forward-looking meeting, where we talked about the things that are important for the district and for him in his second term. I think it was candid. I think it was level setting and we are looking forward to working on those shared priorities.”
In 2022, Trump proposed solving the problem of homeless encampments in big cities by moving them to “large parcels of inexpensive land on the outer reaches of the cities” with “permanent bathrooms and other facilities.”
“Create thousands of thousands of high-quality tents, which can be done in one day, one day,” he proposed. “Now some people say, ‘Oh, that’s so horrible.’ No. What’s horrible is what’s happening now, because now they’re in tents but most of them are in tents that don’t even function.”
