Right-wing media have a long history of attacking homeless people, and so far 2026 has seen a continuation of that trend. Pundits have called for sending homeless people to different countries, “internment camps,” and institutions. Right-wing media figures have also pushed dehumanizing rhetoric by referring to homeless people as “bums,” “blighty,” “junkies,” “mentally deranged,” and even joking about their deaths.
Research/Study
Right-wing media’s heinous rhetoric against people experiencing homelessness
From calling for homeless people to be sent to “internment camps” to fantasizing about making them “fight like gladiators,” right-wing media’s crusade against people without housing continues
Written by Sage Hodil
Published
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Right-wing media have consistently demonized and mischaracterized homelessness, sometimes advocating for aggressive solutions
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- Research shows that homelessness is driven primarily by economic factors, and the belief that it’s a personal choice is largely a myth. From October 2021 to November 2022, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, conducted the “largest representative study of homelessness since the mid-1990s” and found homelessness was mainly determined by “high housing costs and low income.” Margot Kushel, who led the study, has criticized the media for “misdiagnosing the problem” when they “blame homelessness on substance abuse,” arguing, it “simply isn’t true” that homeless people “refuse housing or that their problems make them impossible to house.” [University of California San Francisco, The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, 6/2023; Truthout, 11/6/23]
- Experts from the Legal Defense Fund say that punitive approaches, such as forced displacement and criminalization, “will not end homelessness or address its root causes.” As The Legal Defense Fund stated, “Study after study show that the best way to address homelessness is to provide people with safe, affordable housing and to offer additional supports and services if needed.” [Legal Defense Fund, 8/1/25]
- Yet right-wing figures like Fox host Jesse Watters have spent years calling homeless people “a virus,” a “contagion,” and an “invasive species” and proposing carceral solutions. Watters, for example, has fantasized about sending homeless people to a “mega prison,” advocated for “bulldoz[ing]” homeless encampments and “institutionaliz[ing] everybody,” argued “it was more civilized when we banished them to asylums and put them in strait jackets,” and proposed “federally funded opium dens where the homeless can kill each other.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/21/23, 9/22/22, 9/22/22; Fox News, The Five, 3/24/25, 6/3/19, 9/15/22]
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In 2026 alone, right-wing media figures have called for detaining homeless people in jails and even sending them to other countries
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- On Fox News, billionaire CEO John Catsimatidis suggested homeless people should “live in Uganda.” Catsimatidis claimed the homeless should “live in Uganda for $8.13 a day. We'll give them the check for $8.13 a day, let them live somewhere else.” [Fox News, America Reports, 3/19/26]
- Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said we could “annex Greenland,” “send the homeless there,” and “call it homeless island.” Gutfeld continued, “You send them to a cold place, they've got to build shelter. Pretty soon they start to evolve towards normal living.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 1/15/26]
- Newsmax host Michael Savage proposed “internment camps” for “homeless bums.” Savage said homeless people “shouldn't have the freedom to live in the streets” and we should “take the freedom away from them, put them in internment camps 100 miles away from cities, and give them the care that they need.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie: Frontline, 3/16/26]
- Podcaster Tim Pool said if Democrats were serious about fixing homelessness they would “forcefully detain them and bring them to a facility” because “the only way to remove the homeless is by force.” Pool went on to say people are not homeless “because they fell on hard times” but “because of substance abuse issues and choice.” [YouTube, The Culture War with Tim Pool, 2/16/26]
- Daily Wire host Matt Walsh called for homeless people to be “forcefully and permanently” moved into jails or mental institutions. Walsh stated, “They should be jailed or they should be institutionalized. You remove them from the street forcefully and permanently.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 2/4/26]
- On Newsmax, Citizens Alliance CEO Cliff Maloney complained about “mentally deranged” people on the streets and said, “I'm not trying to be harsh when I say this, but some people, you got to just lock them up and throw away the key.” Newsmax host Carl Higbie also endorsed bringing back mental institutions and insane asylums, saying, “Make asylums great again.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 1/21/26]
- Fox host Todd Piro advocated for rounding up “every single homeless person” and putting them “in one location.” Piro stated, “I feel like you can take every single homeless person in a city, put them in one location, and pay security to keep everybody safe.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 3/26/26]
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Right-wing media have dehumanized people experiencing homelessness as “bad people” who are “repulsive” and embody “third world criminal blight”
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- Jesse Watters said billionaires should “make the homeless people in skid row fight like gladiators.” Watters also proposed for billionaires to “buy maybe everybody in skid row a one-way ticket to Thailand.” [Fox News, The Five, 2/19/26]
- Fox News contributor Lisa Kennedy Montgomery joked about homeless people freezing to death in New York City, referring to them as “corpsicles.” Her comment came after actor Rob Schneider joked, “As soon as they freeze to death you don't have to call them homeless. You just call them frozen dead people.” [Fox News, Gutfeld!, 2/6/26]
- Fox News host Sean Hannity cited New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free bus proposal and said if he really wants to “get rid of their homeless problem” he should “offer free booze, hookers, and drugs and nobody will ever leave the bus.” Prior to Hannity’s comment, guest Jeff Dye made a joke about “bums” urinating and defecating on buses and claimed they will “end up living” there if public transit is made free. [Fox News, Hannity, 1/19/26]
- Greg Gutfeld claimed, “Homeless people do not have the ability to make decisions for themselves. We all know that.” Gutfeld blamed Mamdani for the deaths of 16 people during New York’s freezing weather and argued, “If they had allowed to take down the encampments and required them in shelters, all of those people would be alive.” [Fox News, The Five, 2/3/26]
- Matt Walsh characterized homeless people as “junkies” and “for the most part bad people.” Walsh went on to say, “The only solution is to round them up by force and put them in jail. … Treat drug use as a crime. Treat homelessness as a crime.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 1/6/26]
- In January, right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson referred to homeless people as “vagrants” who are “sickening,” “blighty,” and “repulsive and dangerous.” Johnson also said homeless encampments in California represent “third world criminal blight.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 1/16/26, 1/13/26]