Maryland’s Republican Governor Condemns Trump’s Baltimore Remarks
The Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, on Monday denounced President Trump’s criticism of Baltimore as “outrageous and inappropriate” after the president attacked Representative Elijah Cummings, calling his Baltimore-area district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
“Why are we not focused on solving the problems and getting to work?” Hogan said on the C4 radio show. “Instead of who’s tweeting what [and] who’s calling whom names.”
“Washington is just completely consumed with angry and divisive politics,” the governor lamented. “We’re doing a lot of things, but we sure could use some help from the White House and from the Congress.”
Baltimore mayor Bernard Young agreed, calling Trump’s criticism of the city “childish.”
“If he really wants to, he needs to send us the federal assistance — not only to Baltimore, to cities around this country that are in the same situation that Baltimore is in — but he’s so interested in childish tweets,” Young said.
“Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous,” Trump tweeted over the weekend.
The president continued, calling Baltimore’s seventh congressional district, which encompasses part of the city as well as some exurbs, “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” where “no human being would want to live.”
“The Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded,” he added.
Cummings, who is black and represents a majority-black district, responded that it is his duty to critique the Trump administration.
“Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”
Cummings’s colleagues came to his defense, condemning the president’s remarks as racist.
“We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Trump’s attacks on Cummings.
Baltimore has a higher rate of college-educated residents than the national average, but the city had the highest homicide rate of the nation’s 50 largest cities in 2018.
