President Trump on Tuesday warned during a meeting with the Los Angeles Olympic committees to discuss the 2028 Summer Olympics in L.A. that if city officials don’t address the mounting homeless problem, the federal government would step in.
“If they can’t do it themselves, we’re going to do it. The federal government is going to take it over, we’re going to do it,” Trump said, as reported by The Associated Press.
The president’s comments came as he signed an agreement guaranteeing federal support for the first Olympics to be held in the U.S. since the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“This is a big deal. We’re going to give them tremendous support. You need the support of the federal government to make it really work,” Trump said.
He also criticized the Obama administration for its alleged lack of support for the Olympics.
“The Olympic committee, really wanted the government; they just wanted some support and they were not getting it at all from the past administration,” he said.
“We’re going to give them tremendous support. You need the support of the federal government to make it really work.”
In December, California Gov. Gavin Newsome blamed the Trump administration, not state and local policies, for the mounting homeless crisis in several cities including L.A. and San Francisco.
He claimed that Trump is deliberately withholding “key information” that California needs in order to properly address the homelessness problem, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“California is making historic investments now to help our communities fight homelessness,” Newsom said. “But we have work to do and we need the federal government to do its part.”
Subsequent reporting revealed that the information Newsom was referring to was an official Housing and Urban Development count of precisely how many homeless people live in the state of California.
Newsom claimed that, without the numbers, he can’t release more than $500 million earmarked to abate the systemic problem.
But the state counted its homeless population months earlier, and had sent the figures to HUD to be certified.