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Hours earlier, another fight had broken out, this one beginning on President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. Again, Baltimore rallied in a big way for a local champion: Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat and civil rights icon in his 13th term in the House.
Trump continued his assault Sunday against Cummings and his district, which stretches from central Baltimore into the Maryland countryside. Trump called Cummings, who is black, a “racist” and shared a video of a recent assault on a civilian employee of the Baltimore Police Department.
In response, Baltimore natives, recent arrivals and celebrities lauded their favorite parts of Charm City, from its glistening Inner Harbor to its world-class research university and medical school, Johns Hopkins. The hashtag #WeAreBaltimore quickly became a top trending term on Twitter.
Few denied that Baltimore is struggling, especially with violent crime — the city has recorded 32 more murders this year than has New York, despite being about one-fourteenth the size. But residents traced those struggles to having to overcome a long history of city-instituted segregation and what they said was neglect by the federal government.
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Davis, a superfeatherweight who retained his title, had brought the city its first title fight in nearly 50 years. It turned into a raucous celebration of civic pride, coming just after the first bruising tweets from the president, who called parts of the city a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
Those remarks elicited a fierce rebuttal from Baltimoreans, who are not shy about pointing out their city’s many woes while remaining its fierce defenders.
“The president of the United States has said some very harsh things about Baltimore,” the Rev. Kobi Little, president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, said in an interview. “And to the extent that there’s any truth to what he said, we expect him to show up, 40 miles north of his house.”
The escalating war of words began Saturday, when Trump denounced Cummings’ district as a “very dangerous & filthy place.” His online attacks took place shortly after “Fox & Friends,” the Fox News morning show, aired a segment on Cummings that included a video showing several areas in West Baltimore where trash had been dumped.
In one widely shared response, Victor Blackwell, a CNN anchor, pointed out that Trump had repeatedly used “infested” in the past when referring to people of color. Blackwell choked up with emotion and had to pause to compose himself as he responded to Trump’s claim that “no human being would want to live” in Cummings’s district.
“You know who did, Mr. President? I did,” Blackwell said. “From the day I was brought home from the hospital to the day I left for college. And a lot of people I care about still do.
“People get up and go to work there,” he added. “They care for their families there. They love their children, who pledge allegiance to the flag, just like people who live in districts of congressmen who support you, sir. They are Americans, too.”
The president’s attacks on Cummings on Sunday followed a common pattern: throwing accusations that have been leveled against him back on his accusers. He often claims that critics are stupid, mentally unbalanced or losing a step through age, all things that have repeatedly been said of him. As he provoked a racially inflammatory fight in recent weeks with four first-term House members of color, he has asserted that anyone calling him racist must themselves be racist.
Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, defended the president on the Sunday talk shows and insisted there was nothing racist about his attack on Cummings’s district and the conditions there. “Have you seen some of the pictures on the internet?” he asked.
Kimberly Klacik, a Republican strategist in Baltimore who recorded the video of trash that was aired by Fox, said on Twitter that the city had been ignoring residents’ complaints about people dumping trash near their homes. The issue had “nothing to do with race,” said Klacik.
“I hope the attention brings a trash removal company out there ASAP,” she said in a message Saturday.
In taking on Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Trump was going after one of his most outspoken critics. He expressed anger at the lawmaker’s complaints about the administration’s treatment of detained migrants at the southwestern border.
The Baltimore Sun wrote in a blistering editorial that Trump “sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream.”
Its closing line: “Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.”
In fact, Baltimoreans are used to poking fun at the rats in their neighborhoods, even as rodent complaints in the city have declined in recent years.
Marchers at a 1999 rally trotted out a 12-foot inflatable rat as they pestered city officials about rodent problems, according to a Sun article at the time. And Matthew Fouse created a series of Baltimore-themed stickers featuring a furry rodent that are plastered on bumpers around the city. He said it was one thing for residents to poke fun at the city about rats, and another for a president to slam it from the White House.
“Baltimore is the only city that rolls the ways it does,” Fouse said. “We can embrace our flaws in order to become stronger as a community, which is why the rat sticker works.”
“If you’re a local, you understand that,” he said. “If you’re not, you don’t.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.