A war of words broke out this week between President Trump and Elijah Cummings, the Democrat who represents Maryland’s 7thCongressional District, which encompasses Baltimore.
The skirmish started when Cummings berated Department of Homeland Security acting secretary Kevin McAleenan over conditions at Customs & Border Patrol detention facilities at the southern border. The president, never one to take without giving back, said to Cummings via Twitter that Cummings would do well to take a look at the horrible conditions in his own district – most particularly Baltimore – before leveling criticism at the administration.
Predictably, Trump was branded – again – as a racist.
Where the racism is in the president’s observation is objectively hard to find. He never mentioned Elijah Cummings’ skin color. He never mentioned the ethnic makeup of the City of Baltimore.
What he did was state an observable fact. Baltimore is an urban catastrophe.
As recently as 1980, Baltimore was a top 10 American city with close to a million residents. Today, with a population of just over 600,000 and dropping, it ranks number 30 – eight places behind El Paso. Baltimore has lost population in every census since 1980. It has the highest murder rate in the United States, suffering 300-plus homicides per year — more than New York, a city 14 times its size.
There are 17,000 abandoned buildings in Baltimore. Those vacant buildings are home to rats, cockroaches and drug dealers. A recent TV news report from Baltimore featured an African-American mother who makes her children sleep on the floor in order to avoid the possibility of being hit by stray gunfire.
Baltimore’s decline mirrors that of other once great American cities, examples of which include St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee.
So question: What do these cities have in common? Answer: All have been dominated by one-party Democrat rule for decades. The last Republican mayor of St. Louis left office in 1949. The last Republican mayor in Baltimore departed in 1967. Cleveland has had Democrat mayors in 63 of the last 77 years and 29 of the last 29. Detroit’s last Republican left in 1962. And Milwaukee, for practical purposes, has never had a Republican mayor.
President Trump, unlike any of the Republican presidents who held office while these cities were deteriorating, dared call out the sad state of Baltimore to its elected congressional representative, Elijah Cummings.
In doing so, he by extension calls attention to the other troubled American cities that suffer under single-party Democratic political domination.
No Republican president prior to Trump has had the gumption to tell the truth about anything if there existed even a microscopic chance that it might evoke a charge of racism. This despite the fact that pointing out failure makes one a realist, not a racist. Fear of a racism charge means that nothing gets fixed.
Of course, Democrats don’t really want to fix cities like Baltimore. They’d rather just keep taking the votes of beleaguered citizens for granted. Weaponization of the “R” word has allowed them to do that.
President Trump’s truth telling about these Democrat/Liberal/Socialist ruled cities (without ANY racial comment whatsoever as to the cause) has forced the REAL RACISTS, his critics, to reveal themselves as such. He has exposed their duplicity by sending them into irrational fits of anger that illustrates their incompetence to deal with the horror in their midst over decades of racial suffering in those parts of cities that they neglected and allowed to rot. This has occurred in spite of massive federal aid that was squandered on their behalf. Democrats want CONTROL over society that comes with government dependence. They are not interested in a prosperous society that results from FREE ENTERPRISE that occurs naturally when government leaves us alone.
The democrats have never met anyone that approaches the job of POTUS like Trump. He isn’t a career politician, so he isn’t afraid of the fallout from speaking the truth, however unpopular it may be. They are stumbling over themselves during the debates in their rush to discredit one another and their respective policies, assuring the eventual winner (survivor) will be able to withstand the onslaught from Trump. The loser in all this is the voter, that is left with no clear idea of the REAL plan the Democrats have in mind. Try as they might, it’s hard to argue against the positive results from Trump’s first 3 years in office. They don’t even try anymore. Their clear goal is to defeat Trump, the person. Their open hatred of him consumes everything. They are just aghast the American people could have been so stupid to have elected him president, since the Mueller report didn’t prove he stole the election. The media is quick to publish every word that might be used to prove how awful he is for the country. Are we to believe what we are told or what we can see?
Well written and well-reasoned. Same for C. M. Thank you gentlemen.
Very sad what’s become of Baltimore. I have a friend whose business is located in that city. He grew up there. Amazing that the city has lost so much population and is now smaller than El Paso. And very strange that the voters in Baltimore, Chicago and other like-cursed cities don’t wake up and at least consider a change of local governance. Thank God I live in Texas. And may the progressives stay in Baltimore and not come here with their culture of failure.
Buddy’s right?
WHERE ARE the Republicans?
If they’ve got a better idea, step-up!
The better Republican ideas are working in cities where voters reliably elect conservative Republicans. If the big city Dembulbs who keep electing Democrats would elect a few conservatives, then even you would see–but likely not comprehend–where conservative ideas work in places where progressives have failed for decades.
It’s tough to name a major city that doesn’t have the kind of problems that challenge SOME neighborhoods in what otherwise lives up to its nickname “Charm City,”
Visit September 5-8 and you’ll find fellow Texans braving Baltimore when the Rangers visit the Orioles in Camden Yards. Every visiting team (especially from Southwest Airlines cities, from which there are inexpensive flights to BWI) draws families who enjoy a weekend strolling Balto’s beautiful Inner Harbor.
Something else it’s tough to name: a major city with a Republican mayor. WHY?
Detroit, Chicago, pick a city any city. Where are the Republican candidates stepping up to fix what’s broken in Americas big cities?
They could simply bray, as Trump did, “What have you got to lose?”
There is NO logical or rational response possible to your illogical and irrational comment that blames Republicans and President Trump for the corrupt management of these Democrat/Socialist controlled cities that you refuse to take responsibility for. The Holland tunnel vision and impenetrable brain of Democrats that suffer from your brand of political blindness is clearly on display with your vacuous comments. Furthermore, this explains WHY these abandoned citizens in these corrupt cities will continue to suffer and be doomed for generations to come as long as YOUR type is in charge.
Lack of ACCOUNTABILITY and shameless deflection of responsibility to your enemies without logical justification is entirely typical of the lying Marxist/Democrat religion that rules these cities.
CM:
“NO response?”
At least you tried!
BOOM! Bravo Zulu.
That is precisely the line of reasoning Trump points out in his “racist” tweets. The democrats complain about the exact things their liberal policies lead to, as is the case with Baltimore, LA, Detroit, etc. Where are the republican candidates with the ideas, you ask? They don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning in those districts, as Pelosi herself pointed out, “A glass of water with a ‘D’ next to it could win there!” They can only do what Trump implies “The Squad” should do – enact your ideas and policies, let them prove to be viable, then proceed to correct problems everywhere. Republicans have several examples of successful policies. Compare California and Texas if you like.
Paul really lit a fire this time! Excellent comments, even if our resident contrarian attempts to defend the indefensible. The only thing I could add to this discussion concerns the underlying motivation for the neglect and degradation of these American cities. When power and personal wealth are the ultimate goals of these leftist politicians, the welfare of the citizens is only collateral damage in the struggle. Decent public education must first be destroyed to ensure constituents cannot provide for themselves, and must depend upon the politicians for a meager existence. This lack of education also serves the powerful by keeping the powerless from understanding the corruption and incompetence, and also be gullible to the charge that conservatives are racist. When a politician can depend on 90+% of the vote, why pay any attention to those who are already reliable voters? If President Trump can stimulate a conversation among these citizens, maybe they will start holding their elected officials accountable. Without a viable competitor for votes, the two-party representative system does not work, and devolves into the third world conditions that we see in these once-great cities.
You are so right! These Leftist (Marxist) politicians that dominate the Democrat Party have a PHD in the deceptive skills of expert Con Artistry. This is their profession and their victims be damned! And furthermore, the victims have become a de facto SLAVERY population that are trapped for generations by these new MASTERS who maintain their power by demonizing the escape alternatives in favor of unending false promises of utopia which never happen. How anyone can link themselves to this EVIL philosophy that deliberately perpetuates miserable lives of failure in their victims, is beyond me.
thumbs up brother !