'Where Are They Actually Going?': JD Vance Asked Straight-Out What's Happening To D.C.'s Homeless

3 months ago

While taking questions at an event in Atlanta, Georgia, Vice President JD Vance was asked where the homeless being removed in Washington, D.C., are going.

Transcript

00:00Sir, I'm George Chidi. I write for The Guardian. I live in a small town, less than a thousand

00:10people. I'm also a military veteran. I am a DINFO-trained killer just like you.

00:15Thank you for your service, George.

00:17In 1996, in Atlanta, when the Olympics was coming through, Atlanta very famously rounded

00:25up people who were homeless on the street, downtown, bought them bus tickets and sent

00:30them out of town and often out of state. There was a lot of negative sentiment about that

00:35later. It's one of the things that people remember. I am concerned that in the press

00:40to eliminate encampments in D.C., something similar to that is happening. What is happening

00:47to the people who are homeless, often poor, often have a mental health problem or a drug

00:54problem? Where are they actually going when these camp pits are being broken?

00:59So first of all, George, I was 12 years old when the 1996 Summer Games happened in Atlanta,

01:06so I don't remember exactly the background there. I was worried about football and fishing

01:12and doing all the things that a 12-year-old in southwestern Ohio was worried about. But

01:16I think that the question betrays a certain misunderstanding of what we're trying to do

01:24and what is the nature of real compassion. I talked earlier about my son being harassed

01:30at Union Station a couple of years ago. Now, first, as a father, you have some vagrants screaming

01:35crazy stuff. I'm sure a lot of us have had this experience where you have some vagrants screaming

01:40crazy stuff at your three-year-old. As a father, my first reaction is, grab my son closer, make sure

01:45that he's safe. Okay, then you realize the person's not going to maybe run and charge and attack

01:52us. We'll just keep our distance. But then you think, wait a second, why have we convinced

01:57ourselves that it's compassionate to allow a person who's obviously a schizophrenic or suffering

02:03from some other mental illness, why is it compassionate to let that person fester in the streets?

02:08You see them, they're, you know, a lot of them have clear mental health issues. A lot of them have

02:15clear physical health issues. They're not properly clothed. They're not properly cared for. Some of

02:20them are wasting away. The compassionate thing is to have people who are having mental health crises

02:26to get them in treatment, not to let them sit on the streets and yell at our people while they're

02:32walking by.

02:33And so the president actually signed an executive order to make it easier for some of these people

02:42to get access to mental health treatment. And I don't know for the life of me, what happened in

02:48this country where we decided that the compassionate thing was to let somebody fester on the streets

02:53instead of be, instead of get the treatment that they need. It's very simple to me. And I don't know

03:00why we accepted as parents and as grandparents and as people who just want to walk down the street

03:05in comfort, why we accepted that it was, that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our

03:11kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at

03:19your family. Those are your streets paid for with your tax dollars and you ought to be able to use them

03:24like any other citizen of this country.

'Where Are They Actually Going?': JD Vance Asked Straight-Out What's Happening To D.C.'s Homeless

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