Watch: Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh: ‘You Can Smell the Rats’

In this Tuesday, April 4, 2017 file photo, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, left, speaks al
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Hannah Knudsen

Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh once expressed shock and disgust while touring run-down areas of the city. Now a resurfaced clip from 2018 shows the former mayor exclaiming “Whoa, you can smell the rats” and “Oh, my God, you can smell the dead animals.”

The video segment aired on Fox 45 last year and featured the former mayor touring a neighborhood in East Baltimore. She seemed surprised by the conditions of the area.

“What the hell? We should just take all this shit down,” she said as she viewed the run-down buildings.

“Whoa, you can smell the rats,” she continued, adding “Whew, Jesus” and “Oh, my God, you can smell the dead animals.”

The backlash was swift. According to the Baltimore Sun, many viewers were shocked that Pugh seemed surprised by the conditions of certain areas of the city.

The Sun observed:

Commenters were divided in their response to the mayor’s words, some praising her candor, others asking what she planned to do about the city’s problems.

Others wanted to know why Pugh seemed so surprised to find such blight in the city she leads.

Said one: “There’s no way she didn’t know some parts of Baltimore looked like that.”

Pugh told the newspaper the poor conditions of the neighborhoods were contributing to the city’s decay.

“I walk the neighborhoods of our city regularly with my agency and department leaders, along with our police district commanders, to deal firsthand with the issues that undermine quality of life and rob our children of the future they deserve,” the former mayor, who resigned in May amid an ongoing federal corruption probe, told the outlet through a spokesperson.

Pugh’s resurfaced clip comes in the wake of President Trump’s remarks on Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and the condition of his Baltimore district. Trump blasted Cummings for “shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border” while the Maryland lawmaker’s Baltimore district is “far and more dangerous” and a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Prominent Democrats across the board decried Trump’s remarks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) described it as a “racist” attack, Beto O’Rourke (D) called Trump the “most openly racist president we’ve had in modern history,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called the tweets “ugly and racist.”

However, Baltimore’s problems have been well-documented and recognized by prominent politicians even prior to Trump. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke about Baltimore’s “poorest boroughs” and said that residents have “lifespans shorter than people living under dictatorship in North Korea.”

Trump tweeted about Sanders’ remarks Monday morning in hopes of demonstrating the left’s selective outrage.

“Crazy Bernie Sanders recently equated the City of Baltimore to a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY! Based on that statement, I assume that Bernie must now be labeled a Racist, just as a Republican would if he used that term and standard!” Trump tweeted in part:

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.