Wes Moore

And so he comes up.

And as soon as I saw him, I said, you know, welcome back to Maryland, Mr. President.

And the first thing he said to me, he says, you're a really good looking guy in person.

And I was just like, thank you, Mr. President.

I was like, go army.

And then he said, how can I help you?

And then I started talking about, he said, he told me, he said, he said, my people are telling me you're doing a really good job.

And he said, how can I help you?

And I said, and I said, I want to talk to you about the bridge.

Because months before I met him, we had one of the most tragic moments in our state's history when the Key Bridge collapsed after being hit by a ship.

And, you know, told him what we're working on.

This is the fastest moving project, major project in the country right now.

And somehow that conversation in his own mind turned into me telling him that he was the greatest president of my lifetime.

So it was fascinating hearing his recollection of something that just never happened.

Well, no, I mean, the really powerful thing is that whenever the president was making these, you know, these tropes about Baltimore and our chaos and the violence, the reality is that he just had no data to reinforce it.

In fact, what we saw was that since I've been the governor, we've actually done something really unique, which is work together with local law enforcement, with local leadership, the mayor of Baltimore, county executives around the state.

And now the violent crime in Maryland is down nearly 50% since I have been the governor.

It is the fastest drop of anywhere in the United States of America.

And then in Baltimore City, the last time the homicide rate was this low, I wasn't born yet.

And so when the president is talking about the lawlessness that he I just told him, I was like, I would love for you to take a walk with me around our communities and see what I see, which is actually people working together to address an issue that was a crisis before we took over.