ANALYSIS/OPINION:

It’s getting so bad for the Democratic Party leadership that one could almost start feeling sorry for them. Almost, but not entirely. What’s happening to that party is of their own doing with the extraordinary destruction delivered by a party run and influenced by charlatans and frauds.

The latest illustration, courtesy of President Donald Trump, comes in the form of their bizarre panic because Mr. Trump spoke publicly and passionately about the Democratic destruction of Baltimore, a great and important American city.

Baltimore was established in 1729. The U.S. Navy’s first ship, the Constellation, was launched in Baltimore in 1797, and the Continental Congress from December 1776 to March 1777 met in Baltimore. It was a grand start for a wonderful city that has been kneecapped by 20th- and 21st century liberal policies reducing it to a hopeless, poverty-stricken, rat-infested, murderous town.

But this is not a unique story; this is the trajectory we’ve seen in every liberal-run city in this country. The people of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and New York, among others, all know what the people of Baltimore are going through.

The reason we are talking about Baltimore is because Mr. Trump thought it worth mentioning while watching Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Baltimore’s congressional representative for a quarter of a century, spend his time in Congress “resisting” Mr. Trump’s pro-America agenda, especially obstructing any effort to address the continuing southern border human catastrophe.

Being the newest guy in Washington, Mr. Trump had not received the memos forbidding talking about the abject failure and corruption of the Democrats, which is condemning so many great American cities. He also wasn’t told he should not notice how the Republican Party has been complicit in this obscene destruction of people’s lives by abandoning the inner cities, allowing Democrats to continue their unabated corruption and incompetence.

So it wasn’t a surprise that as Mr. Trump dared to call out the condition of Baltimore and the responsibility of people like Mr. Cummings, his comments were immediately derided as “racist” and an “attack” on the city.

Last time I checked, leading a great metropolitan area, with a majority of citizens who are people of color, into death and despair and poverty is the racist attack on that city. Calling it out, demanding change and discussing how the people of that city deserve better, is the height of leadership.

While some Democratic leaders insist it’s America’s 400 years of racism that’s responsible for the condition of inner cities, it is instead a systemic addiction to power and money that is ravaging Democratic-run metropolises and continues unabated because the Democratic Party doesn’t actually care about people’s lives, simply seeing them as fodder in their political wars.

In the depth of their despair over their city, the people of Baltimore are seeing national attention and national concern is what makes the difference. As the legacy media (aka the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party) went berserk over Mr. Trump’s comments about the condition of Baltimore, their coverage focused on how Mr. Trump is Hitler and all of this was racist. Also, mentioning the rat infestation was an insult to the people of Baltimore.

Those are things which are to not be spoken of. Legacy media protect their heroes by omitting facts that are inconvenient, such as rats, poverty and murder rates.

During the third Democratic debate, CNN’s Don Lemon asked a question about gun control referencing three shootings this weekend. Like a good liberal soldier, he omitted the deadly Chicago weekend where eight people were murdered and 40 wounded. He can’t mention that because Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, so the murders of those people don’t count because they are not useful.

This is, in part, why this disaster rolls merrily along: The media doesn’t dare bring up the facts about our big Democratic-run cities because it highlights the failure of Democratic leadership and their rage and hate-filled platform.

Orkin, the national pest control company, issued a “Top 10 Rattiest Cities” list just last year. All 10 are important American cities — run by Democrats. The cities 1-10 are: Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore and Denver.

Moreover, Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner reported this week, “The Baltimore murder rate is higher than the three Central American nations driving the border surge by migrants seeking to flee crime and murder back home.”

Hale Razor on Twitter reminded us, “Detroit, the great city that all Democrats praise, has the fourth highest murder rate in the United States after St. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans, and has been run by Democrats since 1962.”

Baltimore’s poverty rate of 22 percent is nearly double the national rate.

Even more illustrative of the emergency that has become Baltimore, One America News’ Liz Wheeler told us the life-expectancy in 14 Baltimore neighborhoods is less than North Korea’s, as also reported by The Washington Post.

The city and people of Baltimore deserve better. We all do. The necessary change begins when someone speaks up and demands better. Mr. Trump continues to give us permission to be honest about what’s happening in our country, which unlocks the door to do something about it. For the Democrats, that is another crime he commits. For the rest of us, it is our future returning.

• Tammy Bruce, president of Independent Women’s Voice, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk-show host.

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