What A Day - Baltimore Mayor Responds To Trump Bashing His City

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

National Guard troops began showing up on the streets of the nation's capital overnight, a little more than a day after President Donald Trump announced plans to deploy hundreds of them to Washington, D.C., and federalize the city's police department. But during his press conference Monday, the president suggested more cities could be next. He specifically called out Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and Oakland. All of these cities have declining crime rates – as does the United States as a whole. All of them also happen to be majority-minority cities run by Black Democratic mayors in Democratic-run states. Baltimore Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott joins us to talk about the president's ' racist talking points' and how Democratic mayors like him can't let Trump distract them from running their cities.And in headlines: Trump announced his new pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White said UFC will host a first-ever White House fight next year to celebrate the country's 250th birthday, and YouTube will test a new AI feature to determine the age of its users.Show Notes:Call Congress – 202-224-3121Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Wednesday, August 13th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What Today, the show that just learned via his wife in conversation with Vice President J.D. Vance, that Stephen Miller, White House Chief of Staff and the person in the Trump administration most likely to scream at a waiter, puts mayonnaise on everything. Yep, loves mayonnaise. It's his absolute favorite condiment. I have nothing else to add. On today's show, YouTube begins testing a new AI feature to figure out how old its users are. And President Trump announces his new pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing the last commissioner for making him mad. But let's start with Washington, D.C., home of great Ethiopian food, go-go music, and yes, the capital of the United States of America. Overnight, National Guard troops began showing up on the streets of the nation's capital. Earlier Tuesday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser met with Attorney General Pam Bondi to talk about about President Donald Trump's federalization of D.C. police and the deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops. Bouser spoke to reporters afterwards and explained how she's trying to make

a federal incursion into D.C. work for the city. What I'm focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the additional officer support that we have. We have the best in the business and MPD and Chief Pamela Smith to lead that effort and to make sure. that the men and women who are coming from federal law enforcement are being well used, and that if there's National Guard here, that they're being well used, and all in an effort to drive down crime. Making chicken shit into chicken salad. I get it. But at its press conference announcing the takeover on Monday,

Trump suggested more cities could be next. You look at Chicago, how bad it is, you look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone.

We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this. Now, if you're wondering, if Trump can federalize the local police forces of cities beyond Washington, D.C., the answer is, legally, no. In D.C., which has limited self-governance, Trump can control the city's police for about 30 days due to a local statute. Not so in Baltimore, New York, and the other cities Trump grouped together for reasons that are definitely not about their racial makeup. But that doesn't make Trump's rhetoric any less

dangerous. As we saw with Los Angeles a few months ago, Trump has shown a willingness to call him the National Guard and the Marines. Whether he can legally do that is still being decided by the courts. But we have to point out that Trump's justifications here are absurd. All of the cities he mentioned have declining crime rates, as does the United States as a whole for that matter. Yes, crime, especially gun crime, is a real problem in D.C. and across the country. But that's not why Trump is taking over D.C.'s police force and sending in the National Guard. He's sending a message to cities, especially cities with a predominantly non-white population, especially cities with non-white mayors, and especially Democratic-run cities and Democratic-run

states. Your cities are, as Trump said, of Baltimore in 2019, quote, disgusting. And so are the millions of people who live there. Facts be damned. But that's bullshit. And no one knows that better than Brandon Scott, Democratic Mayor of Baltimore. We spoke on Tuesday. afternoon. Mayor Scott, welcome to what a day. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for having me. As the mayor of Baltimore, what are your primary concerns about President Trump's decision to federalize the D.C. police force and call on the National Guard to combat crime? Well, I think just looking at the data, right? The reality is that D.C. is safer today than it has been in the past 30 years since 30 years. And then as the mayor of Baltimore, because there's

always, he can't keep our name out of his mouth. I feel like he's Chris Rock and Will Will Smith, right? Like that's how he just cannot keep our name out of his mouth. He said that our city was far too gone. And then, of course, I'm sitting here. Actually, I was enjoying my anniversary with my lovely wife and then my phone is going crazy because the president has called us out and said we're too far and gone. And the reality is, is that we right now, as you are not talking have the fewest amount of homicides through this date on record ever ever so imagine hearing that when you're finally tackling a issue that has been facing your city for me long as i've been alive i was born into a more violent baltimore right and then what you see again every single mayor

in city that he called out yesterday we have one thing in common we all have black mayors the second thing that we have in common is that we all have historic reductions in gun violence. And the President of the United States, who's supposed to be the leader of the free world, is doing the exact opposite of leading by distracting from the things that he doesn't want to talk about, whether that be the economy that's on a roller coaster, whether it be terrorists, whether it be the Epstein files to just push these right-wing propaganda-type talking points and, quite frankly, racist talking points about this city just because he thinks. that will work. That's what it just frustrates me. No, and I can totally understand that because

with all due respect, getting crime rates to historic lows is a huge achievement, but I'm going to go out in the limb here and say the administration doesn't care about those facts. They are not concerned about what the actual crime rates are. This is to me a stunt as evidenced by the fact that they're trying to send to the National Guard, which I'm like, I don't know what the National Guard supposed to do about youth crime. But how do Democrats more broadly combat this kind of behavior because we could fact check the administration's claims all day, but we both know what he's actually talking about. And like, you know, you don't have to say this. I will. We both know the bullshit. So how do you start to combat that?

Well, I think, no, I will say when something's bullshit, I'll be sure to say that it is. But I think that what the Democratic Party have to do is really have to stop being afraid to talk about this issue, right? that we know the president and his folks are going to talk about being tough on crime. But the reality is that someone who grew up young, poor, and black in Baltimore, in the 80s, in the 90s, in the early 2000s, when it was the height of the tough foreign crime area and zero and zero talus policing. How did that work the first time? The city didn't get safer then. We've seen the city get extremely safer by us being smart on crime. And that's what my brother and sister mayors are doing around the country, right?

by leading as mayors and creating comprehensive violence prevention plans through a public health landscape. Also, making sure that we are focusing our police department on things like here in Baltimore, our group violence reduction strategy, where we focus on the small amount of people who are likely to be the victim or perpetrator of gun violence. And we go to them first and say, hey, they ask them in Baltimore, they get a letter from me. Change your life. We can help you, get a job, education, whatever you need. But if you don't do this, we're going to remove you from the neighborhood by force. and people have taken us up on that.

Some of them work for the city. Some have it, and we've removed them. And we've been focusing that way. But the number one thing that Democrats have to do is actually push up and lift up the people who are the best seated to talk about the issue, quite frankly. And listen, I love, my congressman gave me my voice.

But when people are calling and asking him about things around gun violence and what we should do and this and that, he's going to push them to me because he knows I am the person on the ground that has to see that issue. The Democratic Party has to lift up his local leaders. They have to put the people that are the closest to the people, that can relate to the people, that can communicate to the people, and have a proven record of dealing with these issues that most directly impact the people. That's what they have to do. I know D.C. officials are in a tough spot because of the city's

unique relationship with the federal government. And like, you know, I, I, I, saying yesterday, Mayor Muriel Bowser has one of the hardest jobs in America, but she definitely sounded pretty resigned on Tuesday, saying she was now focused on, quote, how to make the most of the additional officer support we have. So what have you made of the response to this from DC officials? Well, I think that a lot of folks are trying to pontificate and think about what Mayor Bowser is doing or just criticize her, right? But I would pause everybody to understand that, listen, no other mayor in the country understands what it's like to be in that role like she does, right?

Because when you think about that unique relationship, the federal government can basically do whatever it wants to D.C., right? So she's in a position where she has to balance out what would happen if they totally came and took over versus what she's able to try to accomplish by her being there. And I think the mayor is trying to do that and be very calculated. And that, but it's not like other cities. They don't need to ask. He can just do there, right?

Now, he didn't do it on January 6th when you should have, but now he wants to do it. So you mentioned that Trump ruined your wedding anniversary by calling out Baltimore among a bunch of other cities. And he was hinting that he might send the National Guard to do something like that. To what extent is Baltimore preparing for that possibility? Well, we always have to be prepared. With this administration, the only thing you know you can expect is that it'll be unexpected chaos. So we have to be prepared to see whatever measures we have to take, whether

that's legal or otherwise, always, obviously, in that case, communicating as we do every day anyway with our fabulous governor, Governor Moore and his team on that. But we're also, I want your viewers and listeners to hear this very clearly. We're also not going to be distracted by the latest Jedi mind trick. We're going to stay focused on reducing violence. We're going to stay focused on providing day-to-day services. We're going to stay focused on our 15-year plan to eliminate vacant housing in Baltimore. We're not going to be a distracted from that work while also just being prepared to do that because we have to understand that the president and some folks are going to continuously try to make violence and murder, right, into this simplified thing.

It is one of the most complicated things that the human race faces. And do not allow allow them to try to simplify and play to your emotions over the power that your brain has to understand that this issue is deep and it has to be solved in many different ways. There is no silver bullet. There is no one serum that you can take to rid our communities of gun violence. And there are many things that have to be done, including some that could be done by the president right now that, quite frankly, they're just not going to do. Like what?

For example, the president can come out today and say, hey, you know what, no one needs to be able to go into a store and buy an AR-15, which in the military you would get like four months of training on to use. We're going to prohibit that in the United States of America. The president can join myself and mayors around the country who are trying to fight against Glock and these Glocks because these switches are killing our residents, American citizens, police officers, grandmothers, children all across this country. But they're not going to do that. Here in Baltimore, we fought and won and ended Parliament 80, the nation's largest ghost gun manufacturer's business, not just here in Baltimore, but across the state of Maryland. They could outright say that ghost guns are illegal and eliminate them across the country, but they're not going to do that, right? These are the things that they could do and that we would be very, very, very willing to say the president is actually doing something right this time, but he's not. So to your point about Jedi mind tricks, and I know I've kind of seen this argument happening,

Democratic strategist David Axorod told Politico that this all is a trap for Democrats, because he said Trump's big trick is to, quote, bait Democrats to argue that crime and homelessness are not problems when many living in those communities and beyond believe they are. So how do you, and you've just been talking about what you've been doing, what Baltimore's been doing, but how do you call this out without making it sound like you're dismissing concerns about crime? Because, like, it's a hard, it's a hard thing to weigh. No, it's actually not that hard. And it's the way that we've always been saying.

I start my weekly press conferences off every week by saying where we are with violence in the city. And every single time I say, this is not even last year or when we had the largest drop in homicides that the city has ever seen, right? Ever seen from one year to the next. I stood up there and said, this is not a celebration. There's nothing to celebrate. This is us acknowledging this historic progress that we've made, but also understanding how much further we have to go. And that's the difference.

The president and the propaganda team that they had for the right-wing media, including those who bought up a bunch of local TV stations around the country, they're going to do what they do, right? But the reality is that those very same right-wing TV stations when I first came to office Listen, when I first said that we were going to reduce gun violence, homicides by 15% from one year to the next, ask me every day when this is going to happen. And now that it's happening, they don't ask me anymore. They're always going to move the football, and Democrats have to stop falling for the trap. It's never going to be good enough.

If you saw, if you reduce homicide, they're going to move to auto thefts. If auto thefts go down, they're going to move to carjackers, if car jackers go down, they're going to move to package stuff. Because the reality is, it's not about whether it's happening or being. reduce, it's whether you're doing it their way. And their way does not work. Their way, it's racist, and their way is not in the best interests of American people. Finally, you mentioned how you don't think the cities Trump mentioned in his press conference Monday are, that's a coincidence because, and neither do I? But do you think that these federal occupations of cities, you know, we're seeing this in D.C., we've seen it in Los Angeles, are part of some bigger plan the

administration has? And if so, what do you think the end goal is here? Listen, we have to understand that black people and particularly black people in America have been the most attacked humans that this planet has ever seen. We're not surprised when racists come for us. We're surprised when they don't, right? In fact, I tell my team all the time, if we don't receive an email, tweet,

direct message, voicemail with some racist person calling me the N-word in a week, I feel like I haven't done my job. But what we have to do is be prepared to fight and push back and let people know of what they're exactly what they are doing. Because to me, it looks like they're leading us down the paths of authoritarianism where they can just do and push and say,

this is why you get rid of public media, right? So that everything that people hear is in the vein that you want them to hear. And it's a very dangerous time. And we would heed to look at history and what has happened in other countries, not that long ago when these kind of things were happening. Mayor Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. Thank you. That was my conversation with Baltimore Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott.

We'll get to more of the news in the moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. Let's face it, after next. with drinks, so I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is, until I found pre-alcohol. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this

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In Los Angeles, alongside our federal law, we took a lot. of criticism for 4,000 troops, 700 Marines. You know what we didn't get? There was no summer of love in 2020. In 2025, there was a summer of law enforcement. Defense Secretary Pete Higsef on Fox News Monday. The summer of law enforcement sounds fun, doesn't it? Well, it's officially here, and somehow it continues to get worse. We just learned that the Trump administration is reportedly planning to create something called a, quote, domestic civil disturbance, quick reaction force. that is according to internal Pentagon documents obtained by the Washington Post. The idea is that this military force, made up of 600 National Guard troops,

could immediately deploy into any American city facing protest or civil unrest. Those troops would be on standby at all times, ready in as little as one hour, half stationed in Arizona to cover the west, and the other half in Alabama to handle everything east of the Mississippi. The documents were compiled by the National Guard and are marked as pre-decisional, according to the Post. It's unclear when the program would go into effect, how it would be funded, or whether or not Higsef is even aware of it. But it sounds a lot like what you'd find if you asked chat GPT how to create a police state.

So that's terrifying. President Trump announced his new pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday, E.J. Antony. He just so happens to be the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank known from going from George W. Bush is cool and fun to writing Project 2025. The Monday announcement comes after the president fired former BLS Commissioner Erica McIntarfer, because the numbers in the July jobs report made the economy, but more importantly, him look bad. He also accused McIntyrafer without evidence of rigging the data for political reasons, which is definitely not something his new nominee would do. Earlier this month, Antony floated the idea of scrapping the monthly

U.S. jobs report. He told Fox News Digital, quote, until it is correct, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly jobs report, but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data. Oh, wait, that actually does sound like someone who would rigged data for political reasons. And that level of loyalty is not unexpected given what the president said

when a reporter asked about who he planned to hire. Right. But do you put someone in who actually has labor statistics experience? I put somebody in. I put somebody in who's going to be honest. That's all we were. Even Kyle Palmerlo, a tax expert for the right-leaning Tax Foundation and the Conservative American Enterprise Institute wrote on Twitter, quote,

There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E.J. is not one of them. There is talk of a July 4th. Go ahead. Fight. America's 250th birthday next summer. We're at. At the White House. It's a pretty big venue.

Is that going to happen, Dana? What can you tell us? It is definitely going to happen. Okay. Get your left hook ready, J.D. A cage match could be headed your way. Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White shared some news Tuesday on CBS mornings. White told the host he's flying out to meet with President Trump at the end of the month

to discuss the logistics of putting on a UFC fight at the White House. All normal things. It's definitely going to happen. Well, think about this. When you were just asking me, you know, at the beginning how I felt about, you know, where we are today. July 4th, 250th birthday of the United States of America, Live on CBS from the White House. Where's my Zhang gang?

Kayla Harrison fan, stand up! White's comments come a day after UFC's parent company announced a seven-year agreement with Paramount to host all UFC events. YouTube will start testing a new age verification system in the U.S. today that uses artificial intelligence to determine a viewer's age based on the videos they're already watching. So, based on my viewership of World War II history videos,

I am 95 years old. The new approach comes after political pressure on sites like YouTube to protect minors from inappropriate content, even when they lie about their age. So, how will it work? The AI will run all of a user's recently watched videos through an algorithm in a way that isn't creepy or horrifying at all. Beep-pop, boop, beep. If it decides they're under 18 based on all the kids' stuff they're watching presumably, it will automatically install parental controls on their account. Sounds like a totally flawless plan, right? except for adults who really like to watch Miss Rachel, I guess.

If the new system makes a mistake, the user will have to submit a government-issued ID, credit card, or selfie to YouTube for verification. Again, what could go wrong? YouTube's product management director said the new system is, quote, designed to deliver safety protections while preserving teen privacy, but that sounds like a lot of personal information

to ask for just to watch some videos. Luckily, there are already many, many videos teaching underage users how to avoid the new verification system. You can find them on YouTube. And that's the news. Before we go, this week on strict scrutiny, Melissa Murray and guest co-host Amani Gandhi, of Rewire News Group, break down whether the Texas Democrats walk out to prevent Republicans from locking in five extra congressional seats can actually work, what the legal fallout could be, and how it fits into a week of big legal stories, from college admissions in the age of Trump

to the latest Epstein revelations. Listen to strict scrutiny now, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, buy me a house in the Hamptons. and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about how 165 Surfside Drive in the Hamptons is available for just the low, low cost of $2 million a month.

Yes, a month. Like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and it has Florida ceiling windows and a putting green. It's basically free. What Today is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor.

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