Great news, everyone! The intrepid journalists at Fox and Friends—the White House’s only news source—decided to take a deep-dive into Portland’s homelessness crisis last week.
On October 25, Fox and Friends’ glossy hosts breezed past any context or reporting to dub Portland’s new mobile hygiene stations—which bring portable toilets, hand-washing stations, and garbage bins to homeless camps—a “band-aid solution” to the city’s problems with homelessness.
“By putting these hygiene stations out there, the city is triaging a symptom, not the underlying problem,” said host Emily Compagno, as the camera pans over the new stations. “Without effective enforcement of the law there, nothing is getting done.”
Compagno and her co-host Brian Kilmeade offer zero facts to back this up. But! To make up for this dearth of information, they turn to one of Portland’s top homelessness experts: An employee at a men’s boutique in downtown Portland.
“I’ve had constant people running in out of the street saying they don’t feel safe [from homeless people],” said Michael Kirby, a manager at Boys Fort, who spoke to the pair from a Portland studio. “People are just like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is going on?'”
Kirby points out the homeless population’s problem with untreated mental illness and drug use, a point the hosts’ underscore throughout the segment.
“It’s not like you don’t have housing,” said Kilmeade, apparently unaware of the city’s affordable housing deficit. “It’s mental illness and it’s drug abuse.”
Kirby didn’t have anything negative to say about the hygiene stations, though, and even suggested that Portland’s response to homelessness is working. Asked why Oregon has it “as bad as California” when it comes to homelessness, Kirby said: “The reason why we have it so bad is that we have such great programs to assist in living situations and food and shelter.”
He was quickly interrupted by the hosts, who steered the conversation back to blaming politicians for not cracking down on homeless camps. “It’s not political,” says Kilmeade, “but we need politicians to act.”
Boys Fort co-owner Jake France said Kirby didn’t know he was going to be speaking with Fox and Friends until the last minute. Kirby has previously talked with local Fox affiliate KPTV for a more detailed, balanced news piece on homelessness—and both France and Kirby believed he was just returning to the studio for a follow-up with local reporters.
France told the Mercury that if he had known Kirby was going to be on Fox and Friends, he wouldn’t have let him go through with it. France said the interview was wholly “bizarre,” and didn’t give a fair representation of the city’s nuanced homelessness crisis.
“They were just yelling talking points at him,” he said. “And why him? Why aren’t they asking a city official these questions? Boys Fort is in no way an expert in this topic or the overall City of Portland. But, that’s what you get with Fox and Friends.”
This clip, surely viewed by our so-called president, is only another juicy piece of sensational garbage Donald Trump can use to justify his campaign against homeless Americans.
Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
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@4 He’s too busy being cuckolded by other “independent journalists” in town and writing fake graffiti about himself in flawless script.
I was literally sitting downtown on a sunny weekday at the bus mall, eating a gyro as I was reading one such article titled “Portland’s Homeless Apocalypse” 😱. It was hilarious because nothing they described in the article was even remotely accurate. There was no human feces and I wasn’t harassed by aggressive panhandlers. Nobody bothered me for anything, not even a cigarette. I actually marveled at how clean and peaceful the city still is despite all the recent changes. They’re really trying hard to paint Portland as some sort of progressive failure because they know their credulous readers/viewers don’t ask questions or bother to investigate any further. That would require effort. GOP states and rural areas more closely resemble the impoverished countries the U.S. continues to exploit (check out those infant mortality rates). They continue to use these tired old tricks on their own constituency because these tricks still work. They work because critical thinking skills are actively discouraged within their communities.
Maybe I’m nuts, but I think it’d be a nice idea for the city to provide long-term mental health services for these people. Whether they have problems with drugs or not, there are no doubt high proportions of these folks who have series mental health issues. Why not try and deal with the underlying problem? Where are the legislative mandates and state funding for that? Housing them won’t do anything if you don’t also help them deal with their problems.
The separate problem is that of the microcosm of Portland in the larger unfriendly America. It’s become a place where people want homeless people to be treated with some dignity, but it’s really too good at that. Now everyone wants to be here. It’s really sad. Kind of funny though. Homeless Mecca.
Maybe I’ll leave. Fucking hipsters.