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Donald Trump Insults Baltimore, Again: 'It’s Worse Than Honduras'

The president’s attack on the city, its residents, and Elijah Cummings rages on.

Donald Trump isn’t done insulting Representative Elijah Cummings or Baltimore, calling the city worse off than the third-world country Honduras.

The president even described Baltimore as a “rodent infested mess.” 

Trump told reporters, before his Washington Post interview, that Baltimore residents were “living in hell,” tweeting the city had the “worst” numbers “on crime and the economy.”

“Baltimore happens to be about the worst case,” Trump spewed to The Washington Post. “If you look at it statistically, it’s like, the number of shootings, the number of crimes, the number of everything — this morning I heard a statistic, Baltimore is worse than Honduras, OK?”

Honduras, deemed a major drug route to the U.S. due to lackluster law enforcement, has been plagued with gang violence thanks to its powerful Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs, totaling some of the highest homicide rates in Central America.

Conservative news sites, including Conservative Daily News and Conservative Review, have often compared the two, despite the statistical difficulties of comparing crime rates of an entire country to a singular city. 

Trump compared Maryland’s largest city, with a population of 620,000, to the Central American country, with a population of over nine million. 

FBI data from 2017 shows the most recent full-year figures, revealing that Baltimore had a murder rate of 55.8 per 100,000 people. Last year, the Honduran Security Ministry reported Honduras’ homicide rate was 42.8 per 100,000 people in 2017. 

Trump called the city a place where "no human being would want to live” and a "very dangerous and filthy place." 

The president has also verbally assaulted Maryland’s Black congressman Elijah Cummings. 

Cummings is an outspoken critic of the inhumane conditions at the Trump administration’s southern border migrant detention centers.  

The president has responded to Cummings’ criticism of his administration by accusing him of corruption and calling him a brutal bully.  

Trump blamed Cummings for allegedly wasting and stealing nearly $15 billion of city funding that would’ve been better off spent building “20 brand-new cities” elsewhere. 

“All you have to do is look at the past mayors in Baltimore to see what happened,” Trump charged. “The money that’s been spent, the billions and billions and billions of dollars… And as you know, Congressman Cummings, he has been the leader, the one that tried to get a lot of this money. He is one of the reasons the money was sent there… Baltimore is a mess, and I want to help the people.” 

The Daily Mail reports that Baltimore has received $903 million in federal grants for operating and capital expenses over the last five years. According to court documents, the federal government also provided $1.1 billion to the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.

Baltimore’s Mayor Bernard C. Jack Young denounced the president’s remarks, calling them “fascicle.”

“We know that this president often does not rely on the truth, so we’re not going to dignify nonsense with a response,” Young’s spokesman Lester Davis told the Baltimore Sun. “It’s just patently false.”

Despite Trump’s hate-filled claims, he says Baltimore residents are appreciative of him: “The African American community is so thankful. They’ve called me and said finally someone is telling the truth… They really appreciate what I’m doing, and they’ve let me know it.” 

In the Quinnipiac poll last week, Trump’s approval rating among African-Americans voters was only six percent. 

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