It is way too late to be shocked when Donald Trump — now apparently running for re-election as a full-throated racist — attacks a majority-black city like Baltimore as a “disgusting rat and rodent infested mess” in one tweet, which he followed with, “No human being would want to live there.”
As a human being who lived in Baltimore for 12 years — rarely encountering a rat, by the way — I was offended, of course. Trump was attacking Baltimore only because Rep. Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Oversight Committee, had gotten publicly emotional in challenging the Trump administration’s treatment of refugees at the border. And Trump, because he’s Trump, would retaliate. And since Cummings’s district includes much of Baltimore …
It turns out, Trump had seen a piece on FoxNews — where else? — saying parts of Baltimore were in worse condition than those living in crowded cages on the border, and so Trump goes to Twitter to tell us of Baltimore’s infestation, a word which he almost always reserves for places where black people live. And while it’s true that Baltimore has more than its share of problems, with disturbing income inequality, segregated neighborhoods and tragically high gun violence to name three, it’s also true that the median income in Cummings’s district is well above the national average. (I didn’t live in what is now Cummings’s district. I lived four blocks away.)
The usual Baltimore suspects lambasted Trump. David Simon of “The Wire” fame. John Waters of John Waters’ fame. Nancy Pelosi, whose father was Baltimore mayor, one of two Baltimore mayors in the family.
But when I saw The Baltimore Sun editorial board’s impassioned defense of the city, I was thrilled. As an alumnus of the Sun, where I was a columnist for nearly 12 years before coming to Denver, I was proud to see the paper taking such a strong stand.
And when I found out who wrote the unsigned piece — my old friend and colleague, editorial writer Peter Jensen — I was more than thrilled. I was shocked. Jensen is one of the nicest people I know. He doesn’t do vitriol. He doesn’t go for the jugular. Like most editorial writers, he’s, well, measured.
Not this time. This is what Trump does to people. After Trump had attacked, in Jensen’s words, “700,000 people to screw with one guy,” Jensen came out firing.
In an editorial headlined, “Better to have a few rats than to be one,” he closed it this way: “Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner …we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.”
When I reached Jensen and told him he was now my hero, he laughed and said, “If there was anyone I’d expect to call Trump a rat, it would have been you. I never thought it would be me … I don’t remember that day in journalism school when they tell you how to react after you’ve called the president of the United States vermin.”
The column went viral, and Jensen has been interviewed by news outlets across the world. By editorial standards, the piece was shocking. One of the great puzzles of our time is how the media should best respond to Trump’s mendacity — I use the word because I’m pretty sure Trump doesn’t know what it means — and this is one way that draws attention. Does it play into Trump’s hands? I don’t know. Does talking about impeachment play into Trump’s hands? I don’t know. There is no modern precedent for this president.
To blame Cummings — or as Trump put it, King Elijah’s Baltimore fail — for Baltimore’s poor neighborhoods is, of course, absurd. There is a long history of neglect and abuse, of racism and red-lining, of impoverished schools and the scourge of drugs. If anyone should be doing something about poverty and violence in cities, it would, of course, be the president, who has slightly more power than one out of 435 members of the House. It seems that he’s not interested. But he is interested in insulting the Squad —four women of color in the House — and in insulting civil rights icon John Lewis, whose Georgia House district he also called infested. And now Cummings.
Meanwhile House Republicans are planning to hold their annual retreat in Baltimore — Trump’s “very dangerous & filthy place” — in September. Most Republicans dodged when asked about Trump’s tweets. Many said they like Baltimore — that’s the Baltimore with its Inner Harbor, with Fort McHenry, with a great art museum, with Camden Yards, with Babe Ruth’s birthplace, with a football team named for Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven, with Johns Hopkins Hospital, with more than its share of culture and cuisine and blue crabs. It is often the site of political retreats. Usually, the president would be addressing the coming retreat, but maybe not this time.
He would not be welcome. Of course he wouldn’t. And not only because David Simon — another Sun alumnus whose much-praised Wire addressed the violence and poverty in Baltimore as a platform for addressing the same problems facing too many cities — was slamming him. Simon, whose politics run left and whose tweets are a master’s class in social media insults, tweeted this of the president and the streets of West Baltimore, “If this empty-suit, race-hating fraud had to actually visit West Baltimore for five minutes and meet any of the American citizens who endure there, he’d wet himself.”
Or as slightly milder-mannered editorial writer Jensen put it, “Usually I write about somewhat drier topics. Zoning. Gas tax. Light rail. And some days, you call the president of the United States a rat.”
Littwin should read Breitbart and find Headline report by ORKIN backing up President, and this is where Fox News got the story. Orkin gives count of Bedbugs , and Rats in Democratic cities , that effect health of residents. With 16 Billion going to Maryland, for homeless and better living situations, questions are: Who got the money, and what did it do?
How far down the rabbit hole have we gone to be discussing the intricacies of our president* denigrating his own country and its citizens?
Usually we leave this kind of stuff to our enemies.
Frank, I’d suggest, as a newspaper reporter of nearly 50 years, you find a source other than Breitbart.
The Breitbart story Frank2525 referenced quotes heavily from a February 26, 2018 Baltimore Sun story.
Is the Baltimore Sun a better source?
The following quotes are from a July 30, 2019 Lillian Reed and Scott Dance Baltimore Sun story (link below).
“It’s true: Baltimore ranked No. 9 on Orkin’s list of American cities with the worst rat problems in 2018.
But so is this: Washington, D.C., ranked No. 4.”
That’s some defense: Sure we’re bad but Washington DC is worse!!!
The Sun article goes on:
“President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings and calling his 7th District “disgusting, rat and rodent infested” spurred outrage on Twitter. But some observers noted that Baltimore does indeed struggle with rats.
The city’s relationship with rats was the subject of Baltimore filmmaker Theo Anthony’s 2017 documentary “Rat Film.” The film touches on the way the city’s infestation intersects with segregation, poverty and other racist policies. Anthony declined a request for an interview Monday.”
Imagine that, racist policies in Baltimore!
https://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-baltimore-rats-20190729-20190730-zldtma4bafgr3dqywwrsxhxg7m-story.html
Yeah that’s not how racism works.
The fact that he singled out a black political enemy whose district was 9th on the list, instead of the 8 other prize winners, is why it’s a racist political slur.
It’s pretty yelling that Trump voters are having some continued cognitive dissonance with the issue of the President’s* ongoing bigotry.
But then they knew that going in.
Complicit.
Calling Trump a rat is all too kind. Drop a couple of letters from the standard acronym POTUS and you’ll recognize his true character.
Your seditious belly is showing.
Well said, Mike. And well-said on Mr. Jensen’s behalf, as well.
You really know irony is dead when the seditionaries are railing against sedition
I was only railing against seditious bellies.
But you knew that going in.
Complicit.
Yeah that’s not how sedition works either.
Odd one this. I looked at the Orkin list and guess which city was just behind Baltimore at #10? You guessed it – Denver, my home for the past 24 years all of which I’ve lived either downtown or in Five Points. Odd particularly because I don’t remember seeing a rat in all that time, although I do tend to avoid alleys because, well, they are alleys. Where the dumpsters live. And if a rat problem was ever reported in the Post or the News, I must have missed it. But I love alley cities. In NYC and San Francisco (probably Baltimore too), the much older, often alley-less cities, I know that the garbage bags are on the sidewalks each week and therefore the rat buffet tends to be in plain sight. At least we aren’t a silly enough city to blame our #10 spot on Hancock or Degette. Blame slot homes on Hancock, ok sure, rats – that’s just stupid. I’m smiling thinking of Trump picking on Denver as slot-home-infested.
But this is all kind of irrelevant. Trump’s only defense is an offense, and facts or even the specifics aren’t really the issue, just what he last saw on cable news that gets a rise from his base. I’m sorry to say that for me, Trump is a boring, predictable yawn. Offensive, yes, incompetent yes. But I prefer to not feed the beast. Just vote him out.
Mr. Lopez,
Just looking up some stories on Elijah Cummings and noted, as I’m sure you’ve seen, that Baltimore at No 9 among rat-infested cities is followed by Denver at No. 10, but still apparently habitable. Trump’s New York City rang in at No. 3. https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/orkin-denver-among-10-most-rat-infested-cities-in-the-united-states