Baltimore Mayor Jack Young is askingPresident Donald Trump not to visit the city on Memorial Day as the city remains under a stay-at-home order.- On Monday, Trump and other officials are planning to participate in a Memorial Day ceremony at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore.
- "That President Trump is deciding to pursue non-essential travel sends the wrong message to our residents," Young said. "I wish that the President, as our nation's leaders, would set a positive example and not travel."
Baltimore Mayor Bernard "Jack" Young formally asked President Donald Trump not to visit the city on Memorial Day as the city remains under a stay-at-home order due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, among other officials, plan to participate in a Memorial Day ceremony at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Baltimore "to honor the American heroes who have sacrificed their lives serving in the US Armed Forces."
"The City of Baltimore remains under a Stay at Home order," Young said in a Thursday statement. "That President Trump is deciding to pursue non-essential travel sends the wrong message to our residents, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 virus. I wish that the President, as our nation's leader, would set a positive example and not travel during this holiday weekend."
Young added that Trump's planned visit would be exceptionally costly for the city, which like many other localities, is struggling with a major budget shortfall that makes it difficult to tackle the crisis, to say nothing of providing security for a presidential visit.
"In addition to the President sending a conflicting message to our residents, his visit required personnel and equipment, and has a price tag that our City, which is still dealing with the loss of roughly $20 million in revenue per month simply can't afford to shoulder," Young wrote.
—Mayor Bernard C. Jack Young (@mayorbcyoung) May 21, 2020
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on Young's statement.
This isn't the first time Trump has publicly tangled with the city of Baltimore and its elected officials.
In August of 2019, Trump fired off a series of tweets slamming the city of Baltimore and one of its former representatives, Rep. Elijah Cummings, over its living conditions.
Cummings, who served as the chair of the House Oversight Committee, aggressively investigated Trump and his administration before his death in October 2019.
Trump described the city as a "disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess," saying of Cummings, "if he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place." He also called Baltimore "the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States" and claimed that "no human being would want to live there."
Trump's remarks were swiftly condemned at the time, with Young calling them "completely unacceptable" and blasting Trump as "a disappointment to the people of Baltimore, our country, and to the world."
When Trump's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, tried to give an impromptu press conference discussing Baltimore's problems and how to solve them at a local church, he was swiftly booted off the property by church officials.
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