Donald Trump’s recent proposal to reintroduce “mental institutions” to house and rehabilitate the homeless had the Fox News panelists of “The Five” feeling nostalgic for a bygone era of managing severe mental illness.
“America’s homelessness crisis continues to be an utter catastrophe,” “The Five” ringleader Jesse Watters said in a Tuesday evening segment. “Once vibrant cities across the nation have turned into open air drug wastelands … and former president Donald Trump has a simple solution.”
He then cut to a clip of Trump saying that in a second term, “We will use every tool, lever, and authority to get the homeless off our streets. And for those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them back to mental institutions where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them back into society.”
The national framework of state mental hospitals was dismantled in a policy and funding tug-of-war that began in the 1950s, and was finished off in 1980 when President Reagan largely de-funded the community-based system that had been intended to replace it.
“The plan to bring back mental institutions might not be that radical,” Watters said, noting that Austin, Texas, has plans underway for just such an “island” facility.
Co-host Greg Gutfeld couldn’t help but pause for a moment to own the libs: “If they do this, how will MSNBC survive? They’re going to lose all their anchors and most of their viewers!”
Returning to serious talk of Trump’s policy proposal, Gutfeld suggested that modern progressive thinking would never allow for a return to the days of “insane asylums.”
“We live in an era where the best thing you can do for the mentally ill is seen as a violation of their rights,” Gutfeld said. “What you’re talking about is trying to treat people who can’t fend for themselves, but for some reason that’s been turned into an aggrieved group that deserves protection from something that will save their life – it’s actually an inversion of human compassion.”
Gutfeld added that the old-time asylums were located in countrysides for a reason: because cities are a terrible environment for the mentally disturbed.
“The opposite of institutionalization is leaving them in cities filled with things no mentally ill person could handle: the relentless stimulus, even for a sane person, is nuts. The stressful conditions, the loud noises, the crowds, these are things that are torture-worthy of a black ops site for someone who is homeless and mentally ill.”
But “The Five” suggested there was an even bigger hurdle to firing the “insane asylums” (Watters words) back up: It was Trump’s idea.
“The left will have to galvanize against it like they did with the wall because no matter if it’s right, if it comes from Trump, it has to be wrong,” Gutfeld said. “You can’t side with him even though you see for yourself the destruction of humanity before your eyes.”
Co-host Dana Perino added that if Kamala Harris came up with the idea, “People would think it was great.”
Watters then asked Jessica Tarlov, the “liberal” representative on “The Five” for Tuesday’s show, if she was against the idea “now that you know that Trump is for insane asylums?”
Tarlov then acknowledged that state mental hospitals were shut down largely because of “inhumane treatment,” but that despite that, “this idea is something that’s actually popular in a lot of liberal policy circles.”
“Not necessarily insane asylums,” she added, but “a solution where you have good staff and you have doctors who are going to help people and not just keep them in a proverbial cage. There are a lot of people for that.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
