Tucker: Democrats and the 'racist' strategy
It didn't work for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but Democrats are hopeful it will work in 2020.
Over the weekend, President Trump got bored and decided to see if he could make Democrats defend the most dangerous, corrupt place in the country, and of course, he could. It wasn't hard.
He just sent a flurry of tweets criticizing the city of Baltimore and the congressman who represents it, Elijah Cummings. The president called Baltimore "a disgusting rat and rodent infested hellhole, a corrupt mess that no human being would want to live in."
A lot of people who have never been to Baltimore claimed to be deeply offended by those remarks. But one person who seemed to agree with him was the former mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh. She had said something remarkably similar just last year. "What the hell?" said the mayor. "You can smell the rotting rats." The mayor did not explain why she didn't clean up the rotting rats.
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That footage, by the way got almost no attention when it ran on a local news station. Neither did the story just 10 days ago about the deputy police commissioner of Baltimore who was robbed at gunpoint by four thugs while out to dinner with his wife. People were not talking about that story in Georgetown this weekend. In fact, if there is one thing that virtually everyone who lives in Washington aggressively doesn't care about, it's Baltimore. Baltimore is 40 miles away, but it's a different world. You could live here your entire life in D.C. and never visit or think about Baltimore. Most people in D.C. do just that -- or did.
Then came this weekend, when "Orange Mussolini" weighed in on the subject and suddenly, Baltimore became holy ground, a sacred city of light that only an infidel would disparage. An infidel, or perhaps -- and this will not surprise you -- a racist -- because honestly, only a hardened bigot would criticize a place as awesome as Baltimore. That was the media consensus over the weekend.
Brian Stelter, CNN chief media correspondent: This weekend, racist messages raging from the President's Twitter feed.
Amanda Carpenter, CNN political contributor: Donald Trump massively makes it a racist debate about Baltimore.
Stelter: Another racist attack on an African-American member of Congress and the city he represents.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.: Well, the president is, as he usually is or often is, disgusting and racist.
New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, 2020 presidential candidate: He uses a racist appeal. He uses a bait and switch.
Al Sharpton, MSNBC host: In the most bigoted and racist way ...
Got that? It's race-baiting says Al Sharpton, a noted authority on the subject. Pretty funny.
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Republicans are very easy to intimidate. They still get red in the face when CNN calls them "racist." But they shouldn't. It's not real. Nobody means it, least of all, Al Sharpton. If you paid him money, he would stop criticizing you. You should, probably. It is just easier.
The whole thing is a campaign tactic dreamed up at the DNC. Once the Russia conspiracy imploded, Democrats and their lackeys in the media moved on to the other message they have, which is, "Shut up, racist." It didn't work in 2016 for Hillary, but they're hopeful it will work this time. They are trying hard. We will see.
Meanwhile, Baltimore -- the actual city of Baltimore, not the metaphor of Baltimore --could desperately use some attention. So it's good news that it is finally getting some. If anything, Trump's tweets underplay the crisis there.
Modern progressivism isn't about helping the people beneath you, it's about establishing moral superiority over them. It's a revolution aimed downward, a boot in the face of people beneath you.
Last year, the city of Baltimore recorded 309 homicides -- that's a rate of more than 50 per 100,000 people. To put it in perspective, if Baltimore were a country, it would have the fourth-highest murder rate in the world, barely below Venezuela.
Or think of it this way: last week, the left denounced President Trump for reaching a deal with Guatemala that declares the country a safe location for asylum seekers. Liberals told us that Guatemala has too much crime and too many gangs to be considered safe. Making people stay in Guatemala is a human rights violation they told us, and yet, and here's the amazing part, Baltimore's murder rate is double that of Guatemala.
In almost any way that a city can be a disaster, Baltimore is. More than 22 percent of the city lives in poverty. Almost 65 percent of all children in Baltimore grew up in single-parent households.
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The schools, not surprisingly. are a catastrophe. In 2017, one-third of Baltimore's high schools had zero students who were proficient in math. Let that sink in. In 13 of Baltimore's 39 high schools, not a single student -- not one student -- was deemed proficient at math. You'd think that would be a national scandal. You'd think that Elijah Cummings would be in a hunger strike until that's fixed.
Bernie Sanders to his credit, by the way, visited Baltimore a few years ago and was shocked by it.
Sanders: Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think you are in a wealthy nation. You would think that you were in a third world country.
A third world country? Whoa! Wait a second. Bernie Sanders, a white supremacist? No. Actually, he's just an old-fashioned liberal. That's how Democrats use to think if they saw misery and urban decay. They wanted to fix it. Not anymore. Modern progressives are different from that. Modern progressivism isn't about helping the people beneath you, it's about establishing moral superiority over them. It's a revolution aimed downward, a boot in the face of people beneath you. That's what it's about.
So Democrats support the status quo in Baltimore. It doesn't bother them and that's not surprising because they created it. The city hasn't had a Republican mayor in more than 50 years. Things really began to fall apart after the 2015 riots there, and this didn't get a lot of attention because, again, nothing that happens in Baltimore gets any attention until Trump tweets about it.
But it was a big deal, and the Obama administration imposed a consent decree on the city's police department because they are racist, hat in effect radically restricted the ability to protect citizens, and not surprisingly, crime exploded. Elijah Cummings, by the way, praised that consent decree. He is very much a part of the problem in Baltimore.
From her taxpayer payer funded vacation in Italy today, Nancy Pelosi defended Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore. And Pelosi would know --she grew up in Baltimore. Her father was a mayor of Baltimore; her brother was the mayor of Baltimore.
But like most rich progressives, Pelosi herself is long gone. She is in San Francisco now in Pacific Heights. She has got a winery in Napa. She is not interested in going back to Baltimore. It's easier just to give other people lectures about Baltimore. Most Democrats feel that way. They've given up on the poor.
Instead of trying to fix Baltimore's problem and rescue its people, they have decided to import a new population of people, many of them illegal aliens. Baltimore City Councilman Zeke Cohen once bragged about it on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
Carlson: My only concern is for the people who are already here. Does it make a school better when people move in who don't speak English? Is it good for the kids who are already in the school do you think? Does it improve the education? Is it fair to the taxpayers? Have you thought about that?
Zeke Cohen, Baltimore City councilman: I think the greatest asset in our city is our diversity and I was joined by an amazing group of immigrant youth yesterday in passing this resolution.
Carlson: No, but that doesn't -- hold on -- slow down. That doesn't mean anything. I asked you a sincere question. Does it improve a school when a lot of people who move in, they don't speak English? Does a school get better?
Cohen: Absolutely.
Yes, schools get a lot better when you import a lot of people who don't speak English. Actually, it turns out that the schools haven't gotten better at all, but Zeke Cohen doesn't care. Nobody in the left cares because they don't care about Baltimore.
Illegal immigration has been devastating for Baltimore, and a lot of cities like Baltimore. The last thing any poor desperate community needs is even more poor and desperate people. It's not an attack on anybody, it's a fact. Go to Lewiston, Maine if you don't believe it.
Illegal immigration drives down wages for low-skilled workers nationwide. They suck up education and health care dollars. Democrats do not care about this. Why? Because illegal immigrants are reliable votes for them. They are a pathway to power. And for Democrats, that is worth sacrificing a city or two or 10 or a whole country.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on July 29, 2019