Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

More To The Story: When Brandon Scott took office in late 2020 as one of the youngest mayors in Baltimore’s history, he pledged to reduce the number of homicides and incidents of gun violence. That year, there were 335 reported homicides in the city of roughly 600,000 people, making it one of the most dangerous cities per capita in the US. Scott began implementing a violence prevention strategy designed to get at the root causes of gun violence. Over the last few years, Baltimore has been witnessing a remarkable drop in violent crime, especially homicides. But that progress doesn’t seem to matter to the White House. Last month, President Donald Trump listed the city as one of several led by Democratic mayors where he’s considering sending the National Guard.

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Scott talks to host Al Letson about what he thinks is really driving the Trump administration to send troops to Democratic-led cities, why the city’s strategy to reduce gun violence appears to be working, and what his political future might look like.

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Read: Trump Threatens to Invade More American Cities (Mother Jones)
Listen: Taken by ICE (Reveal)
Watch: Baltimore’s Mayor Slams Trump Troop Threat: “What We Want From the President is Very Simple” (Mother Jones)
Listen: “Madness”: A Retired Brig. General Slams Trump’s Military Power Grab (More To The Story)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We have other cities also that are bad, very bad.
0:06.0	You look at Chicago, how bad it is, you look at Los Angeles how bad it is.
0:11.0	We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem.
0:15.0	And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland.
0:19.0	We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone.
0:22.9	When the president was in office during his first term,
0:27.0	we had a lot more violence.
0:28.5	We had over 300 homicides in those years, right?
0:31.6	But the president didn't say he was going to send in first then.
0:35.0	The president didn't say he was going to help the city out then. None of that
0:38.9	happened during his first term. On this week's more to the story, as President Trump plans to send
0:45.0	troops to Memphis, I talk with Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott. We discussed the president's threats
0:50.9	to send the National Guard to his city, even as Baltimore's violent crime rate is approaching all-time lows.
0:57.0	Stay with us.
0:59.0	Hi, it's Lacey Healey. This season on Things that Go Boom, we're taking on the military-industrial complex,
1:10.0	because the same industry that profits off of foreign wars
1:12.5	and puts tanks on our streets
1:14.2	also has a huge everyday impact on our own communities.
1:18.5	This love story about these weapons
1:22.1	becomes a distraction from what they're being used for.
1:26.4	The next season of Things That Go Boom dropped September 22nd. The next season of Things that Go Boom
1:28.1	drops September 22nd.
	...

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