August 25, 2025
Wes Moore is doubling down on his criticism of Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C., and plans to send the National Guard into cities like Baltimore.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is doubling down on his criticism of Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C., mere days after he extended an invitation to Trump to put his bone spurs where his mouth is and join Moore on a safety walk around Baltimore, slated for October.
According to Politico, Moore stated in his Aug. 21 letter to Trump that, regardless of the administration’s stance on funding gun violence prevention programs, Baltimore City and the State of Maryland are reporting record lows in violent crime.
“Homicides in Maryland are down statewide by 20% since my inauguration two and a half years ago. In the first six months of 2025, the Baltimore Police Department continued to see double-digit reductions in gun violence, including a 22% decrease in homicides and a 19% decrease in non-fatal shootings from the year before. We are currently on track to have the lowest number of homicides in Baltimore City since we began officially keeping crime statistics,” Moore wrote.
In response to Gov. Moore’s letter, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the letter was “nasty and provocative,” adding that he “did his job” as President by sending funds to Maryland to help repair the Francis Scott Key Bridge after its 2024 collapse, which killed six people, but suggested he could reconsider such decisions in the future.
Gov. Moore was undeterred by Trump’s bluster on his social media platform, joining CBS’s “Face The Nation” program on Aug. 24 and blasting him in 4K. According to Moore, “the last time the homicide rate was this low in Baltimore City, I was not born yet.”
He continued, “The reason that I asked the President to come and join us is because he seems to enjoy living in this blissful ignorance…these tropes and these 1980s scare tactics. As someone who actually deployed overseas and served my country in combat, to ask these men and women to do a job that they’re not trained for is just deeply disrespectful. The members of our National Guard are trained up to be able to address things like emergency situations, situations where you need, where you need a surge of supports for traumas and disasters that are happening within individual jurisdictions. That is not this, and this is a direct deflection that the President is authorizing.”
Baltimore’s Mayor Brandon Scott issued his own comments in response to Gov. Wes Moore’s letter to Trump; many of his statements echoed the points that the governor raised.
“President Trump’s takeover of Washington, DC’s police force makes two things very clear. First: that he will do anything, and sacrifice anyone, to boost his own ego. And second: that he has no real solutions to make our country any safer, healthier, or freer. Here in Baltimore, we have driven down violence to 50-year lows, with significant reductions across every major crime category. This has not happened by chance. It is the result of an intentional strategy, coordinated alongside local, state, and federal law enforcement, violence interrupters, and community leaders.”
Scott continued, “In contrast, the President has embraced unconstitutional stop-and-frisk tactics, diverted federal law enforcement from their actual jobs to instead conduct indiscriminate traffic stops, and slashed funding for public safety programs that are driving real progress. “Whether the President chooses to accept Governor Moore’s invitation or not,” Scott noted there are a number of financial commitments the federal government could make to further increase the drop in violent crime in Baltimore.
Scott closed his comments, noting that “Only these commitments, not actions that erode our residents’ rights, would help our work to reduce violent crime. Otherwise, if Trump wants to roll into Baltimore purely to stage a photo op and spew racist narratives about Black-led cities, I speak for the vast majority of our residents when I say: We are not interested.”
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