Donald Trump is giving the Washington establishment hell and they don’t like it. He has woken the sleeping giant and Washington has been put on notice, no more business as usual.
These words were written in August 2015, months – years even – before anyone else started taking Donald Trump seriously as a presidential candidate. But one political commentator predicted his surprise victory in an article called ‘Don’t measure the drapes Hillary, here comes The Donald’. It was not written by a hotshot at some big TV network or analyst at an Ivy League university, but Jeffery McNeil, a vendor of Street Sense, a magazine produced in Washington DC, which – like The Big Issue – is sold by homeless or vulnerably housed people so they can work their way out of poverty.
Selling papers on the streets of the US capital, McNeil had detected a change in the air that the media and so-called establishment didn’t. Three years later the world is still trying to adjust, and McNeil has continued to track Trump’s ups and downs, attracting (mostly) criticism and (a little) praise from Street Sense readers. But his view from the street reached the highest office after one reader, who was especially impressed by his columns, invited McNeil for a tour of the White House.
Here’s what happened next, in Jeffery’s own words.
“In the last two editions of Street Sense, I have been criticised by a former customer and a fellow vendor for writing so much about Trump. And the paper has been criticised for publishing me. Some say what I write is offensive. Well, homelessness is offensive! I’ve lived an offensive life. Homelessness is grotesque, putrid and ugly. I slept outside. I was robbed and assaulted. I’ve seen people die on the street.
“But today I can honestly say my columns are read from the White House to the crack house.
“Although I have passed by the White House several times, it may as well have been in China. It was something I knew of, but it was distant. Over the years I’ve written about, and to, several politicians. No one has had the decency to respond to anything I said, until now. Recently a White House communications staffer, Cliff Sims, read one of my columns and invited me to that distant seat of power. He wanted to hear more about my life and accomplishments and said he would pass on the columns I brought with me to President Donald Trump. I toured the West Wing, the press area and residences.
