This is a developing story. It has been updated.
BALTIMORE — U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson traveled here Wednesday to defend President Trump’s harsh depiction of the city, saying, “There are problems in Baltimore, and you can’t sweep them under the rug.”
Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon who has a long history at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, said the city has to be “willing to address” the problems it faces.
“It’s sort of like a patient who has cancer: you can dress them up and put a nice suit on and try to ignore it, but that cancer is going to have a devastating effect,” he said standing outside of Hollins House, a federally funded housing complex for senior citizens located in the congressional district of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.). “You have to be willing to address that issue if you are ever going to solve it.”
Trump has triggered a firestorm since Saturday by repeatedly attacking Cummings and his majority-black legislative district, which he described on Twitter as a “rodent infested mess” . . . where “no human being would want to live.” He called Cummings “a racist and a bully,” and tweeted that Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, was a “very dangerous & filthy place.”
Elected officials and residents in Baltimore and across the state expressed outrage and lashed out against Trump, calling him and his tweets racist. Gov. Larry Hogan (R), a frequent critic of the president, said the tweets were “outrageous and inappropriate.”
Hollins House, top, is visible near a pile of trash and debris at an abandoned structure in Baltimore. (Julio Cortez/AP)
No state or city officials appeared at the news conference, which was announced Tuesday night and was originally slated to be held on an open lot that belongs to a church, across the street from the eight-story housing development.
Carson aides hastily moved the event to an alley behind the housing complex after Gregory Evans, a member of Morning Star Baptist Church, said no one asked permission to hold an event on the church property. “This is our property,” Evans told the aides.
As the news conference was redirected several yards away, Evans said the HUD secretary was trespassing, and if the federal government wanted to hold the event there, it should have asked the church. “There was no permission granted,” he said.
Evans said he did not want to address Trump’s tweets but said it is “obvious” the federal government has not done enough to help the city. “You can see the dilapidated housing,” he said.
Carson, who was touring the apartment complex when Evans approached his aides, said the church’s reaction was an example of “animosity” that exists, stifling efforts to address problems.
“It’s so important that we’re willing to talk and to work together,” Carson said. “A church said to ‘get off of our property’ — a church — when we’re talking about helping people.”
The HUD secretary did not make any policy announcements at the news conference but highlighted opportunity zones, a tax-incentive effort pushed by the Trump administration to boost economically distressed communities.
He attempted to lessen the war of words over Baltimore, saying that there “are a lot of good things in Baltimore, but there are a lot of bad things too.”
Carson recalled traveling to the city in the early 1970s, before the Inner Harbor was developed, and thinking, “Are you kidding me?” when asked about living there. But, he said, the city has made numerous strides.
“So there’s a lot to be proud of here in Baltimore,” he said.
He said he has spoken with Trump in recent days about what can be done to improve Baltimore and he is “very willing” to work with city leaders, including Cummings.
“The President’s emphasis is on the people and that certainly is my emphasis,” Carson said. “We have to learn to work together and realize we’re not each other’s enemy.”
Cummings chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which has been holding an array of hearings to investigate Trump administration policies, including reports of inhumane treatment at migrant detention centers. His district includes both poor and more affluent areas of Baltimore and parts of Baltimore and Howard counties. It is a relatively wealthy and highly educated area.
Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, rose to prominence largely from his work at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The only African American member of Trump’s Cabinet, he has forcefully defended the president and his policies. On Monday, hours after the Rev. Al Sharpton chided Trump for his “bigoted and racist” remarks and for having a “particular venom for blacks and people of color,” Carson appeared on Fox News to defend the president’s depiction of Baltimore.
Carson also rejected critics who have called Trump’s tweets racist, citing rising wages and a drop in the unemployment rate, the president’s efforts to help the manufacturing sector and his embrace of prison reform.
“All of these things are happening,” Carson said. “These are not things that a person who is a racist would do.”
A woman sitting outside Hollins House in a wheelchair Wednesday morning said she was angry over Trump’s comments about Cummings and Baltimore. She said the remarks were racist, “because he knows black people live here.”
“I live here. I don’t have trash; I have a clean place,” said the woman, who is African American and declined to give her name.
She added that Trump needs to “look at his own family,” noting that the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, owns Baltimore-area housing complexes where there have been reports of mice.
“First of all, what city doesn’t have rats?” the woman said. “He picked on Baltimore because our congressman is talking about how they are treating the people coming into the country.”
Read more:
‘Bigoted and racist’: Al Sharpton joins chorus of outrage at Trump’s attacks on Baltimore
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