My friend Mike Nadler emails an idea so good that I wonder if it is being planned by President Trump.  It would be a way of turning on its head the phony accusation that MAGA is about returning to the days of segregation and provide justification for his criticisms of Elijah Cummings for doing nothing to help his most beleaguered constituents.

Mike writes:

How about Trump kicking off a campaign to help Baltimore with a big speech with the explicit theme "Make Baltimore Great Again!"?  With MBGA hats and all.  He can paint a picture of how bad things have gotten there using statistics and quotes from an array of Democrats ranging from the former Baltimore mayor who talked about smelling the rats to Bernie Sanders comparing it to a Third World country, to the  New York Times story, "The Tragedy of Baltimore."  

He could then go on to propose a major program (or at least a study commission) to help it in the way we help some cities after natural disasters along with leadership changes. 

Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood, with a mixture of occuppied and abandoned town houses.
Photo credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

President Trump has also mentioned the problem of corruption with regard to the federal funds that have been sent to Baltimore without helping change things for the better.  There may be a lot of fruit ripe for the picking for federal prosecutors.

With Baltimore's schools a disaster area, a push for expanded school choice should be part of the package.

The biggest advantage is contrasting his approach of taking action to help people versus the Democrats' approach of letting problems worsen and blaming Republicans and racism for the messes they have allowed to fester in the cities they control.