The two people charged in federal court with plotting to blow up Baltimore’s power grid are certainly to blame for putting the region in danger, if the allegations against them are accurate. But they’re not the only responsible parties.
You can draw a direct line from the foiled neo-Nazi plot, revealed by federal authorities Monday, to conservative commentators and conspiracy-mongering cult figures like Donald Trump, who for years have riled up their minions on the alt-right with distortions about Maryland’s largest city.
Following the public uprising after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray while in Baltimore police custody, Laura Ingraham of Fox News claimed the city had “no male role models, no discipline, no jobs, no values.” In 2019, then President Trump called it a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Last year, Tucker Carlson, also of Fox, deemed Baltimore “one of the worst places in the Western Hemisphere. It’s a little bit of Haiti in the Mid-Atlantic.”
