Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan rebuked Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake during a conversation in 2015 amid riots in her city after she remarked "the gang leaders are really angry," telling her: "So what?"
The revelation comes from Hogan's upcoming memoir, "Still Standing, Surviving Cancer, Riots, a Global Pandemic, and the Toxic Politics that Divide America," in which he derides Rawlings-Blake, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, and others over their handling of the mayhem five years ago following the death of a black suspect in police custody, Freddy Gray.
Fox News obtained several chapters of the book, due for publication later this month.
"'[T]he gang leaders are really angry,' the mayor said to me," Hogan writes, recalling the exchange with Rawlings-Blake. "'They're demanding that if we don't . . .'
"'Did you just say, 'The gang leaders are angry'?' I thundered at the mayor. She nodded. 'So what?' I shot back.'"
Hogan, only the second Republican governor of Maryland since Spiro Agnew in 1969, was incredulous at Rawlings-Blake's attitude regarding calls for her lifting a curfew during the riots.
"'The gangs are threatening that if we don't lift the curfew, they're going to march downtown and burn down the Inner Harbor,'" Hogan writes, quoting the mayor. "'You tell them to go ahead and make my day,' I said. 'Tell them to come on down, I'll be waiting for them, and several hundred state troopers and National Guard soldiers will be waiting for them.'"
The riots occurred following the April 12, 2015, death of Gray – about three months after Hogan took office, and were a harbinger of the nationwide protests and riots that erupted after the death of another black man, George Floyd, in police custody on Memorial Day in Minneapolis.
Hogan declared a state of emergency April 27 and activated the National Guard, of which 5,000 soldiers were eventually deployed. The Maryland State Police also allocated 500 officers for duty in Baltimore and requested additional assistance from other states to help quell the violence.
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