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Trump reveals a motivation for his anti-homelessness push: Foreign real estate tenants

One bit of rhetoric that has been central to President Trump’s political career is the primacy of Americans above everyone else. His “America First” mantra has been used to isolate the United States internationally and to defend his dramatic immigration policies.

“Republicans believe that we must take care of our own citizens first,” he said at a rally on Monday night in New Mexico — in contrast to immigrants who enter the country illegally. He’d just made that point, reading from the teleprompter: “Our scarce resources are in danger of being rapidly depleted to the point that we will be unable to effectively care for our own citizens,” he said, “you and our existing homeless populations, many of whom are American veterans, right?”

That is indeed true. One estimate indicates 9 percent of those experiencing homelessness are veterans, nearly 38,000 individuals in total.

View the complete September 17 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

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