Donald Trump posted a picture of me from my tent. Then a bulldozer arrived

US President Donald Trump was riding in his motorcade via Washington on Sunday on his way to the golf club when he saw something clearly angry him – a shelter tent camp on a patch of grass.

“The homeless must go out, immediately,” in fact, the social reality was published on that morning, along with four pictures.

One of these showed a man sitting on a camping chair of his tent, which I was learning in the end was Bill Theodi. Four days later, Mr. Thodi was forced to move after the president announced a campaign to displace the country’s capital.

“This is me,” he said when Trump’s photo, which was the first time he saw.

“This is crazy that he just bent out of the window, takes a picture of me and then publishes it on social media in a negative way, using it as a political tool for him.”

On Monday, Trump announced that his administration will “remove the homeless camps from all over our gardens, our beautiful gardens.”

“We have poor neighborhoods here, we get rid of them,” he said from behind the platform in the White House press room.

After the announcement, BBC Verify decided to investigate the photos published by the president.

We match visual evidence in tents – including bending on the road alongside the herbal area that was placed – to a site on Google Streetvief.

The camp was about 10 minutes’ drive from the White House, and less than that from the BBC office in Washington – so I went there to see what happened to the site that caught the attention of the president.

When I got that local officials were warning people who could soon be moved to move.

Mr. Theosy, 66, also found Missouri, sitting in the same camping chair.

He saw Trump leading before.

“The procession procession is very long,” said Theodi. “I saw that comes here three times.”

“You know, I understand that he does not want to see chaos, and for this reason we go out on our way to keep it clean. We are not trying to not respect the president or anyone else that comes.”

He told me that he had lived on the site for years and worked in construction, although he has been out of full -time work since 2018. Usually, he could capture a few transformations a month.

On Thursday, Mr. Theuddi and the other residents there were said to pack and leave immediately.

A local correspondent who was filmed as a bell was sent to dismantle tents and other properties that people have left.

“They said that you need to fill it or that they would be bulldozing it. They did not come to the hadith, it was, go, go,” said Mr. Theoddi.

Wayne Terong, deputy mayor of the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services in the capital, said that the city authorities have removed the camps throughout the capital before.

He said that this is usually done with notice for at least a week, but the process was quickly tracked after Trump’s announcement.

The homeland camp was the largest in the city, according to the local authority – where 11 people live next to one of the main roads from Washington, DC.

Before the last campaign campaign, 97 people lived in the homeless camps in the city this year, a significant decrease from 294 in 2023, the figures appear.

The estimated number of people with displacement is 5,138 this year, a decrease of 5613 in 2024, According to the city’s annual piece.

The latest data from the community partnershipAn organization that works to reduce homelessness, shows that about 800 people are not accredited, while about 4,300 others have a type of temporary housing.

The White House said that it will offer the situation of people who sleep in the streets in the shelters of the homeless and provide access to addiction or mental health services – but if they refuse, they will face fines or imprisonment time.

“You can not only extract people, threaten them with arrest, or force people to go to a shelter,” said Mr. Theosy. “I don’t want to go to shelter – it’s bad places.”

Organizations that work with the homeless say that the system is flawed because the shelter capacity is often limited.

Since he left the site, Mr. Theodi spent three nights at a hotel in Virginia after he gave him a person who saw the removal of money to cover this.

“If I had not blessed God for this person, I do not know what I was going to do. Maybe I would have been sitting on the sidewalk throughout the day,” he said.

“This room is crowded with things, my cheeks, and my property … but it is good to sleep in bed, shower, to use a private bathroom, it’s very amazing.”

“The best of my choice is to try to find a safe place to prepare my tent. I don’t know where it will be, but I would like to stay in the capital,” said Mr. Theody said.

George Morgan, 65, from Washington, DC, met in the camp. He said he was living there for only two months, after he had to get out of an apartment he could no longer tolerate.

When I called to see what happened to him after removing the camp, he was in a motor reception area with his dog, blue, after someone covered the cost of a night there as well.

“We are sitting here to find out if we were able to get another night. I had to pay the dog fee of $ 15 – which was the last money I got.”

When I last spoke to Mr. Morgan, he managed to extend his stay at the hotel during the weekend – but he said he did not know what he would attend next week.

“I must play it with the ear where I have no money. God has always come, so I will see what God puts after that.”