President Donald Trump’s snarky dismissal of Baltimore as “so far gone,” when he hasn’t a clue about daily life here, immediately brought to mind two things: His last loud disparagement of the city and the high-grade hypocrisy of a Republican professing to care, even backhandedly, about the nation’s urban centers.
Fact is, the Republican Party has shown virtually no interest in cities or city problems, other than to ridicule them for political gain, in more than a half-century. Baltimore’s last Republican mayor left office nearly 60 years ago.
Trump’s nasty criticism of “rat-infested” Baltimore in 2019 was not merely classic Trump, but a clarion reminder to his base that he and the predominately white GOP reign superior to minority-majority cities run by Democrats.
Here’s the part of his 2019 remarks about Baltimore that made that clear: “No human being would want to live there.” That was as deeply racist a comment as Trump has ever uttered or posted on social media. He said, essentially, that nearly 600,000 people, the majority of them Black, must be subhuman, or in some way defective.
Now in his second term, Trump pushes the lie that the nation has been invaded by violent immigrants and that cities populated by Democrats are crime-ridden hellholes in need of military intervention. In announcing such a remedy for the District of Columbia, he mentioned Baltimore and Oakland, both minority-majority cities.
“You look at Chicago, how bad it is,” he said, “you look at Los Angeles, how bad it is, other cities that are very bad, New York is a problem, and then you have of course, Baltimore and Oakland — you don’t even mention that anymore they’re so far gone.”
“So far gone”?
We are so used to Trump’s lies and exaggerations, they’ve become part of the aggravating noise of modern life, like gas-powered leaf blowers now banned in Baltimore.
But now that he’s ordered the National Guard into Washington, despite the capital city’s drop in crime, there’s concern that Trump might deploy the military to other cities, including Baltimore, where such a move would be unnecessary after an historic decrease in violence.
Maybe sending in the troops is the inevitable result of having an impulsive and erratic president leading a party that has for decades seen no political payoff in helping cities like Baltimore.
The last Republican mayor was Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, a supporter of civil rights who pushed for an end to racial discrimination in housing during his final term in the mid-1960s. McKeldin, a former Maryland governor, represented the last hurrah for Republicans in Baltimore, the last time any Republican showed sustained interest in the plight of the state’s largest city.
Gov. Larry Hogan, who was just 11 years old when McKeldin left office, rose to prominence in 2014 as a suburban Republican and enjoyed consistent popularity during two terms in Annapolis. He professed love for Baltimore, and early in his tenure, he helped the city through a real emergency — not a phony one like those that Trump declares — and ended the civil disturbances that followed the death in police custody of Freddie Gray.
But just a few weeks later, Hogan showed his suburban Republican colors; he killed the state’s $2.9 billion Red Line transit project in the city and sent millions of dollars instead to the counties for road projects. He then voted to scrap the $1.5 billion State Center redevelopment project, also in the city.
So Hogan’s support for Baltimore was more mouth than money, and Baltimoreans remembered that when he ran for the Senate against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in 2024, giving him just 20% of the city vote.
Meanwhile, the administration of Mayor Brandon Scott has been achieving success in reducing the violence that caused so much bloodshed and crushed civic spirits for close to a decade. Starting in 2015, we had eight dreary years of 300-plus homicides each.
But then, in 2023, the annual total dropped to 262. In 2024, it dropped to 202.
As of Tuesday night, Baltimore police had recorded 86 homicides, 32 fewer than at this point last year. There have been 207 non-fatal shootings, down by 37 over 2024.
While there are other crimes that diminish the quality of life in the city — drug dealing, attempted carjackings, property crimes — the drop in homicides and shootings should be cheered. They are the result of multiple programs aimed at interrupting potential violence or getting the people most at risk — young men already the victims or perpetrators of assaults — onto a better life track. Baltimoreans also benefited from the smart coordination of local, state and federal resources by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and by a renewed effort at getting guilty verdicts in homicide trials under a new Baltimore State’s Attorney, Ivan Bates.
That’s all local, all achieved without the National Guard.
If Trump and congressional Republicans really wanted to help Baltimore, they could help the police department in its renewed effort to recruit more officers. Instead of giving $50,000 signing bonuses to “patriots” to become Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, they could put that money into police recruitment and training; it’s needed here and across the land. Some of the billions set aside for ICE could also go to recruiting teachers, social workers and nurses, all needed to help turn the corner on crime and other problems.
If Trump and congressional Republicans really wanted to help, they could restore the $500 million in federal funding for local police, crime prevention and juvenile justice they just cut.
But key words: really wanted to help.
And that’s not what they’re about.
