Maryland Governor Wes Moore took a light jab at President Donald Trump during an appearance on CNN, accusing him of being “obsessed” with his looks and fabricating stories about their interactions.
Appearing on The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Moore addressed Trump’s latest claims that the governor once called him “the greatest president of my lifetime.” The story, which Trump repeated several times over the past week, unraveled quickly after Fox News aired footage of the pair’s brief meeting at the 2024 Army-Navy football game. The clip showed Trump inviting Moore to join him in the stands, with the governor politely declining, but it did not include the flattering line Trump described.
“Well, the President seems to be obsessed with me,” Moore said on CNN. “Today, he called me a beauty. And when I first met him, he just talked about how I was a good-looking guy. And now he just continues to make statements that are just flat-out false about our state’s largest city.”
Collins pressed Moore on Trump’s remarks about Baltimore, which the president has labeled a “hellhole.” Moore used the opportunity to highlight progress in the city, noting a sharp decline in violent crime since he took office. “When I first became governor, Baltimore in 2022 had about a homicide a day. Now, in the past two and a half years, Baltimore and the state of Maryland had among the fastest drops in violent crime anywhere in the United States,” he said. “The last time the homicide rate was this low in Baltimore City, I was not born yet.”
The exchange turned slightly comical when Collins played the Fox News clip of Trump and Moore’s interaction at the Army-Navy game. Trump’s version of events suggested a glowing endorsement from the governor, but the video showed a different story. Moore explained what really happened.
— Wes Moore (@iamwesmoore) August 25, 2025
“When I first met the President, after he started talking about how I’m a good-looking guy, I started talking about the importance of the Key Bridge and how the state responded after the tragedy,” Moore said, referring to the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. “They told us it was going to take 11 months to clear the Federal Channel. This state got it done in 11 weeks. That’s what we were discussing.”
Moore added that Trump later invited him to sit together at the game, but he declined. “I told him, I’m good, I have my own seats. And I went to sit with the Cadets and the Midshipmen. So no, I never called him the greatest, and I just find it absolutely comical that that was the way he remembered that conversation.”
Wes Moore on Donald Trump claiming he called him the greatest president of his lifetime: “That imaginary conversation he revealed from the White House not only did not happen, but unfortunately it’s just a consistent thread and a consistent theme we are seeing from the president… pic.twitter.com/l9h8Oso1lo
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) August 26, 2025
The Maryland governor framed Trump’s repeated comments, both about his looks and about Baltimore, as distractions from the real issues. “What the people of Maryland want is leadership that is focused on results, not invented stories,” he said.
Whether Trump’s embellished version of their meeting was intentional spin or faulty memory, the video evidence made Moore’s case for him. And in the process, he managed to turn the president’s compliments into a punchline.
