Of Rats and Tweets

As Democratic presidential candidates spin their wheels in Detroit, trying to convince the country (and maybe themselves) that they are the best alternative to the current occupant in the White House for 2020, President Donald Trump continues to find new ways to divide the country along racial lines while keeping his Republican Party in check.

Trump's latest target-by-tweet is the city of Baltimore, which he called a "very dangerous and filthy place", a "rat and rodent infested mess", and "no human would want to live there" in response to all the crime and violence that's been supposedly going on there.  He's also referring to the district that's been served since 1996 by Congressman Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat born the son of a sharecropper who's been taking shots at the President through his position as chairman of the House Oversight Committee when it comes to how the U.S.-Mexican border situation is being (mis)handled.

In the past few weeks, Trump has also used his Twitter account to demean other public figures of color besides Cummings:  the Reverend Al Sharpton and the congressional "squad" that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.  We have no way of knowing if the President has no "racist bone in his body", as he claims, or just says these things as a political tactic to throw off his opponents.  But it does make the country wonder if they unwittingly sent a white supremacist to Washington.

Trump has bad-mouthed other cities in the past, most of which are run by Democratic governments, as places that are fit for neither man nor beast (as W.C. Fields might have put it).  Any place that doesn't have a Trump-owned property, that is, which must be immaculate.  But then we hear reports of rodents and insects in Baltimore apartments whose landlord just happens to be Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law.

Meanwhile, back in the Motor City, the Democrats spent two nights and 20 candidates debating each other over how they would run the country after Trump is defeated.  So far, the only ones assured of making it to the next round are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.  Which isn't very inspiring when you think about it.

But as long as we have a President whose only motivation to stay in office is that he'd be going to prison if he weren't, no one is safe from his digital diatribes.  Not ever race relations or world peace.  The Big Rat needs his cheese.