million short. not just baltimore but cities around this country, their federal funding has been cut by this president, who claimed when he got in office he wants to make america great again. what he is doing is dividing america racially. what if he offers a solution and picks up the phone today and says, mayor, i have a plan to solve the problems that are plaguing our poorest cities. can you work with him? i would welcome that. instead of us going back and forth on how bad american cities are particularly baltimore, tell me what you want to do to help us fix these problems. take me out of politics and political strategy and the 2020 election. help us understand, what s the real world impact of president trump s repeated racist tweeting? it has divided this country. he has alienated our allies
for people across this country to unite. mayor, thank you so much for joining me this morning. i appreciate it. thank you. let s dig into what all of this means. joining us now, former assistant to president obama and white house cabinet secretary and a pair of msnbc contributors jason johnson politics editor at the root.com and noah brockman associate commentator and also the author of unjust, social justice and the unmaking of america. noah, the divide and conquer strategy worked for the president when he ran in 2016. in 2018 it failed. the days, the weeks leading up to the mid toirms, that is when the president went hard on the caravan, called for sending military down to the border. what did people do? they showed up to vote and voted against that and voted for solving health care and other issues like that. what s up with the president going back to this strategy? i don t know.
so help me understand that. the president s attack on baltimore this weekend was not met with any new proposals for federal solutions to your problems? none. not one. i have not heard from the president. normally when a new mayor comes into office whether through a mayor resigning or whatever they get a letter from the president congratulating him and offering to meet with them and find out their priorities. i haven t received anything and he is right down the road. get specific with me, please. have you seen the reverse? have proposed or already enacted federal spending cuts hurt your city? yes they have. where? in our health department, our s.n.a.p. program he is talking about cutting even further. the money we needed for our tunnel upgrades. we wanted $215 million. he sent us $115 million, $100
john hopkins, shock trauma. we have all of our cultural events right here in baltimore. we are a city with problems like any other city but we have moved them forward. we re moving them forward without legally a lot of assistance from the federal government. hud, they re cutting programs that are hurting poor people all over this country. not just in baltimore. but in the entire country. we need for the president to send federal help to baltimore for programs to uplift people instead of tearing people down. those attacks and tweets i ve never in my entire life ever heard of any president tweeting and doing these things to divide us instead of bringing us all together. like i said earlier, our allies are even shaken by some of the things this president is doing and has done. you re right, mayor. it has never been done before. so maybe this is an opportunity
two years ago i went to the white house to ask you to endorse my bill to let the government negotiate directly for lower drug prices. you told me then that you supported the legislation and that you would work with me to make it happen. i took you at your word. joining me now, baltimore mayor bernard young. mayor young, president trump, clearly, has sent a message to the city of baltimore. what is your message to him? my message to the president is, stop tweeting and send federal help and resources to the city of baltimore. not just to the city of baltimore. to urban cities around the country. that are having problems with aging infrastructure, with crime, and grime, and reduction in resources from the federal government. we have an unfunded epa mandate to fix our aging infrastructure which causes us to raise water rates on our vulnerable, poor people in the city of baltimore. stop tweeting and send us the help that we need.