On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that Washington, D.C. “does have high crime rates,” but there are other areas with higher murder rates and that while he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s solutions for crime and homelessness in D.C., “the idea that the streets actually belong to the citizens is something that liberals have just gotten away from.”
Maher said, “D.C. does have high crime rates, … higher than Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, which is right after them. But Shelby County, Tennessee, Jefferson County, Alabama, Jackson County, Missouri have higher murder rates than D.C. Why don’t we send the FBI there, why don’t we send the National Guard there?”
He also questioned whether you can lower crime “By dragging the homeless off the street? Now, to me, this is another instance of Trump having an idea that’s not completely wrong…he takes advantage of when liberals f*ck up.”
Maher added that the checkpoints are going too far, and many of them are in the nice areas of the city.
He added that “the idea that the streets actually belong to the citizens is something that liberals have just gotten away from. They made homelessness into a lifestyle, and we don’t really know what the answer is, but it has to be some version of, you don’t have to go home, because you don’t have one — we should do something about that — but you can’t stay here. You can’t — because we see this in this city more than any other, you can’t just take over the streets of the city. So, again, as in so many of these instances, like with immigration, he’s got not…a totally erring idea that this is a problem, but then he goes about it in such a cruel and unnecessarily capricious way, which it seems like is what he’s doing now with the homeless situation, we’re going to get them into shelters or jail.”
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