Elijah Cummings’ home was broken into on Saturday, July 27th – the same day that President Donald Trump attacked his district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess” and “very dangerous and filthy place.” News of the burglary didn’t make the news until August 1st, but it still made for some ironic timing, especially in the face of a media intent on disagreeing with anything Trump says.
They say the first step towards fixing a problem is acknowledging that it exists, but liberals don’t want to do that with Baltimore, because they would require them to admit that Trump is actually right about something.
We heard all the usual talking points about how Baltimore is a “beautiful city” with “some bad areas,” or that they simply lack adequate federal funding. Other pundits couldn’t conceive of the possibility that Trump’s comments could be anything but racially motivated – rather than reality motivated. Baltimore’s city councilman Zeke Cohen appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to be one of the few to acknowledge Baltimore’s violence problem – before completely deflecting the blame to “400 years of systemic racism.” It’s certainly an odd excuse considering that Baltimore was a much more peaceful place in the 1960s than today – does Zeke seriously believe American race relations were better then?
The reality of the matter is that if Baltimore were its own country, it would be the third most dangerous country on the planet. As you can see charted below, only El Salvador and Jamaica would be more dangerous. The statistics are sourced from the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime.
And an obvious disclaimer is in order – that Baltimore isn’t the world’s most dangerous city, so a similar kind of thought experiment could be done with other cities. For example, many of the violent countries charted above have individual cities within them more violent than Baltimore.
Still, Baltimore does rank among the most violent cities in the world. According to World Atlas, Baltimore is the 21st most dangerous city globally. So violent are they, that as we’re told we need to accept millions of illegal aliens from countries like Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras because of the violence they face – those asylum seekers would be facing twice the violence if they were settled in Baltimore.
A city’s murder rate isn’t static. New York City saw their annual murders plummet from 2,245 in 1990 to 292 by 2017 in large part thanks to the leadership and policies of Rudy Giuliani. Baltimore can change – I just won’t hold my breath that Baltimore sees similar leadership to what saved NYC anytime soon.
