Supporters for D.C. statehood cheer as drivers honk their horns during the morning commute outside the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C. on Feb, 11, 2020. The House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing for H.R.51 was in progress.
Republicans will never allow Washington, D.C., to become the nation’s 51st state because it would be politically beneficial to Democrats, President Donald Trump said in an interview Monday.
“D.C. will never be a state,” the New York Post reported that Trump said in an interview. “You mean District of Columbia, a state? Why? So we can have two more Democratic — Democrat senators and five more congressmen? No thank you. That’ll never happen.”
The president added: “They want to do that so they pick up two automatic Democrat — you know it’s a 100 percent Democrat, basically — so why would the Republicans ever do that? That’ll never happen unless we have some very, very stupid Republicans around, that I don’t think you do. You understand that, right?”
District leaders have campaigned for decades for D.C. to become a state. A U.S. House committee marked up a statehood bill in February, for the first time since 1993.
Statehood would give tax-paying D.C. residents two senators and one voting House member. D.C. currently has a non-voting delegate of the House and no senators.
The federal government recently gave D.C. millions less in coronavirus relief funds than states received, though D.C. has more residents than Vermont and Wyoming.
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About 4% of D.C. voters elected Trump in 2016.
