Picture of the Baltimore Key Bridge demolition and removal on 07 27 2024 showing empty spaces where the bridge and its wreckage used to be (Photo by James Radja)
By Lauren Burke
On March 26, 2024, a container ship the size of three football fields named Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River in Baltimore. The catastrophe shut thirteen percent of Maryland’s economy, according to officials, and six people were killed. The cost to replace the Francis Scott Key Bridge is close to two billion dollars. Maryland Governor Wes Moore called the event a “global crisis” that impacted 8,000 jobs. But over the last week, the collapse occurred because the latest political football tossed into play by President Donald Trump, who has traded barbs with Gov. Moore on social media.
On August 25, President Trump said, “I gave Wes Moore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge. I will now have to rethink that decision,” even though the money to fix Key Bridge was allocated under President Biden. Trump’s remarks came after a running series of replies from Trump and Moore, and the Maryland Governor picks up the pace of an aggressive social media strategy that put President Trump on defense — much like what California Governor Gavin Newsom has been doing after Texas’s racial congressional redistricting round threatens the seats of five Democrats, all at the request of Trump. “There is nothing that has Donald Trump’s signature that has anything to do with the Key Bridge,” Gov. Moore said during an interview on Roland Martin Unfiltered on August 25.
Governor Moore asserted that more than 8,000 jobs were impacted by the Key Bridge collapse, and the economic impact is $15 million per day. Officials in Maryland proclaimed the Key Bridge would be rebuilt by 2028. “When they told us it would take 11 months to clear the channel, we did it in 11 weeks. We did it by putting on a case study of showing what it looks like to work together in a time of crisis. We received a 100 percent cost share between the federal government and the state of Maryland that was passed by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and signed by the former President, Joe Biden. There is no money that Donald Trump ‘gave us,’” Gov. Moore said emphatically.
Whether Trump can interfere with the project is unknown, but it is unlikely. Trump is now on the brink of sending the National Guard into the city of Chicago — a move that Illinois Governor and Chicago’s Mayor are pushing hard against, after sending the National Guard in to “police” Washington, DC. President Trump has been fully focused on targeting Black elected officials around the nation, including DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and Gov. Moore in Maryland.