Quote of the Day:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggests that President Trump is launching “racist attacks” when he points out the mess Democrats have made of Baltimore. At some point Democrats may have to explain why the city they’ve been running since her brother became mayor in the 1960s consistently fails to protect public safety.

James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal

Whatever you think of the tone of President Trump’s tweets about conditions in Baltimore (and I cringe), it is time to consider the plight of the city’s poorer neighborhoods and ask what should be done.

President Trump’s tweets about Baltimore and longtime Rep. Elijah Cummings grew out of Rep. Cummings’ verbal attack on a Border Patrol officer and comments on conditions at the border last week during congressional hearings.

President Trump called Baltimore “a disgusting, rat-infested mess.” Is it?

Turning Point USA, a conservative organization, went to Baltimore and the answer appears to be that there is a rat problem. Townhall reported:

One of the most interesting things to come out of Johnson's trip: a resident showing him a flyer from the city of Baltimore asking residents to pick up trash to keep rats away. The kicker? This flyer was handed out in the last week. 

"The best way to prevent rats is to cut off their food source and not provide hiding places for them," the flyer clearly stated.

Rodents are such an issue in Baltimore that the city has a dedicated "Rat Rubout Program."

. . .

"Rats are a community problem that must be addressed by all residents. When a rat infestation exists at one location it may easily spread to adjacent properties," the website states. "To help alleviate this problem, Baltimore County has hired a licensed exterminator to treat areas affected by this issue. We will be treating homes with alley access. Notification signs of when treatment will begin will be placed at the main street entrances of your community."

Freeman writes:

[Baltimore] certainly is dangerous. Mr. Cummings’ ideological allies at New York University’s Brennan Center recently issued a report on violent crime last year in the nation’s 30 largest cities. Citing data from the Baltimore Police Department, the liberal Brennan crew reports that Baltimore has by far the highest murder rate of any of the 26 big cities for which 2018 data are available. Despite a decline in murders since Baltimore’s horrific 2017, Brennan reports that Baltimore’s 50.7 murders per 100,000 people add up to more than ten times the rate in New York City or San Diego.

The Brennan report makes the understatement of the year in calling Baltimore a “city that continues to struggle with violence.” And President Trump isn’t the only person who has noticed this tragic situation. Some people have been raising the alarm for years.

For example, a Member of Congress named Elijah Cummings said at a House subcommittee hearing in June of 1999: “I live in a drug-infested neighborhood. I know people who have been trying to get treatment for years.”

Like many troubled cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle), Baltimore has lived exclusively under Democratic governance for decades. These cities seem to be destroying themselves from within through policies that harm their civic tone.

For Speaker Pelosi, Baltimore is a family affair–not only her brother, but her father served as mayor of the city.

And Baltimore isn’t the only blue city with a rat problem. The rodents are so prevalent in Los Angeles’ homeless encampments that Dr. Drew Pinsky has gone so far as to predict we’ll see another bubonic plague.

Here are two Baltimore stories that, as far as I can tell, have only made the local news: Just a few days ago, a woman carrying her five-month-old son in her arms reportedly was robbed at gunpoint and beaten by three juveniles. Broad daylight: 2 pm.

And in the second story, a Citiwatch body camera provided new information about how a gathering of young people in the Harbor area almost became a riot. According to this report, kids were running on the tops of cars, attacking people and kicked one man in the face.

Said Councilman Eric Costello:

“By large most of those kids were just enjoying the weekend and some nice weather but we did have a small group of kids who were acting inappropriately running on the roofs of cars so that’s very disappointing that type of behavior is unacceptable,” He said.

Inappropriately? Unacceptable?

I’ll say.

Democrats don’t want to seek the roots of the blight in once-great American cities. They may fear the answers.