President Trump is under fire for a series of tweets blasting Rep. Elijah Cummings' (D-MD) home district of Baltimore as a "very dangerous & filthy place." While the President's critics have focused on the perceived racial focus of the tweets, they have fastidiously avoided a debate on the merits of his claim.
Is Baltimore actually a very dangerous and filthy place? In fact, it is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Moreover, Baltimore--like nearly every other extremely dangerous city in America--has been controlled by Democrats for decades.
In 2018, Baltimore was ranked 23rd in Mexico's Citizen's Council for Public Security's annual list of the 50 most dangerous cities on earth. Its homicide rate of 50.52 per 100,000 residents topped even that of San Salvador, El Salvador, which has a murder rate of 50.32 per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, the most violent city in Honduras, San Pedro Sula, has a homicide rate of 46.67 per 100,000.
This means that Baltimore is a more dangerous place to live than the two most violent cities in countries whose citizens are literally using out-of-control violence to claim asylum in the United States.
Baltimore, it should be noted, hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1967 and has been under such unanimous Democratic control that a research librarian at Baltimore's City Hall contacted by "The Dan O'Donnell Show" couldn't even find evidence of a single Republican serving on the city council in decades.
The other three American cities that made the world's 50 most dangerous list have also been under near-unanimous Democratic control for generations. St. Louis, Missouri, which ranked 16th and had America's highest murder rate at 60.59 homicides per 100,000 residents, hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1949. Detroit, which ranked 46th with a 38.78 murder rate, hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1962. New Orleans, ranked 50th with a homicide rate of 36.87, hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1872.
According to 24/7 Wall Street's analysis of violent crime rates published in USA Today earlier this year, St. Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore are also the three most dangerous cities in America with violent crime rates that each top 2,000 per 100,000 residents. By way of comparison, the national violent crime rate is 382.9 per 100,000 people.
The only other city in America to top 2,000 violent crimes per 100,000 people, Memphis, Tennessee, has never had a Republican mayor in its history.
In fact, nine of the ten most violent cities in the country have been dominated by Democrats for decades, including Kansas City, which hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1991, Cleveland, which has n't had one since 1991, and Milwaukee, which hasn't had one since 1908.
No wonder Democrats are focusing on President Trump's supposed racism: There is no question he is correct on the substance of his argument. Baltimore is a dangerous place, and so are literally dozens of other cities that Democrats have run for generations.