Skip to content
Politics
Link copied to clipboard

Trump Attacks Black Lawmaker Anew, Rejects Racism Accusation

President Donald Trump attacked a prominent black lawmaker, Elijah Cummings, on Twitter for a second day, while he and his acting chief of staff rebuffed suggestions from Democrats and others that his comments had been racist.

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump attacked a prominent black lawmaker, Elijah Cummings, on Twitter for a second day, while he and his acting chief of staff rebuffed suggestions from Democrats and others that his comments had been racist.

“Elijah Cummings has failed badly!” Trump said of the House Oversight Committee chair Sunday morning, about seven hours after his final tweet along the same lines late Saturday night.

Cummings, 68, recently criticized Trump’s policies on the U.S.-Mexico border, calling the treatment of migrant children at detention facilities there “government sponsored child abuse,” and clashing with Trump’s acting Homeland Security chief during a hearing.

Trump applied the same “failing badly” theme to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she came to Cummings’s defense and denounced the president’s comments.

He pivoted from Cummings’s district, which he’d branded “a disgusting, rat and rodent infected mess” in which “no human being would want to live,” to the wealthy San Francisco area that Pelosi represents in Congress, adding that her district is “not even recognizeable (sic) lately.”

Trump was back on social media Sunday afternoon, after spending several hours at his Virginia golf course, tweeting that Cummings and Pelosi should say “Thank you, Mr. President” for lowering black unemployment, and that Cummings, not he, was racist.

While Trump blamed Cummings for conditions in Baltimore, he pledged in his 2016 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, and in his January 2017 inaugural address, that he would fix poverty in inner cities, along with crime and drug problems.

“Every action I take I will ask myself, does this make life better for young Americans in Baltimore, in Chicago, in Detroit, in Ferguson, who have really, in every way, folks, the same right to live out their dreams as any other child in America, any other child,” Trump said at the Republican National Convention in July 2016.

Cummings, a regular critic of Trump, this month called the treatment of migrant children at detention facilities on the U.S.-Mexico border “government sponsored child abuse.” Pelosi, a Baltimore native, defended Cummings as a champion “for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague.”

Maryland’s 7th Congressional District includes about half of Baltimore, including most of the majority-black precincts, and parts of adjacent Howard and Baltimore counties, including a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas. The district is about 36% white, 55% black and 4.9% Asian, according to Census data.

Conditions in Cummings’ district are “FAR WORSE and more dangerous” than those at the southern border, which “is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded,” Trump said on Saturday. The president also implied, without offering evidence, that corruption was rife in the district, suggesting federal money sent there is “stolen” and that an investigation was needed.

Cummings has served in Congress since 1996 and was re-elected in 2018 with 76% of the vote. “The public is getting wise to the bad job that he is doing!” Trump said Saturday.

Following Trump’s suggestion that he spends little time in Baltimore, Cummings tweeted that “I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors.”

The genesis of Trump’s tweets seemed to be an oversight panel hearing on July 18, during which Cummings became emotional as he asked acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan about conditions for migrants held in border facilities.

“You feel like you’re doing a great job, right?” Cummings asked McAleenan. “What does that mean? When a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower?” he continued. “Come on man. What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”

Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, said on “Fox News Sunday” that Cummings comments about conditions in border detention facilities were “lies” and that the president was fighting back against “illegitimate attacks.”

“It has absolutely zero to do with race,” Mulvaney added.

Fox Trigger

Less than an hour before the tweets on Saturday, Fox & Friends, a morning television show the president is known to watch avidly, aired a segment on Cummings and his Congressional district, showing images of trash and disrepair.

There could be a more personal component, though: the House Oversight Committee this week authorized Cummings to subpoena work-related emails and texts sent by White House officials, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on their personal accounts.

A subsidiary of Kushner’s family real estate business, JK2 Westminster, owns thousands of rental apartments and townhouses in the Baltimore area, the New York Times reported in 2017. None of the housing complexes are in Cummings’s district but several are close enough to share a ZIP code.

While Trump has been critical of many Democrats, some of his harshest comments have been aimed at minority lawmakers. That includes the so-called Squad of four first-term female congresswomen, and Representative Maxine Waters of California, whom the president has repeatedly called “low IQ” on Twitter and in campaign rallies. In 2017 Trump blasted Representative John Lewis, saying the Georgia lawmaker’s district was “falling apart” and “crime infested.”

The president’s recent unrelenting attacks on the Squad — all American women of color — is part of a bet that he can stoke his base of die-hard Republican supporters. Yet it risks deepening accusations that he is racist and turning off more moderate voters as Trump pivots to his 2020 re-election campaign.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the Squad’s de facto leader, tweeted that Cummings is “a legendary coach who brings the best out of everyone.” Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump has a “hate agenda” that’s “now seeping into policy-making.” She cited undermining clean air regulations as an example.

Read more: Trump Plays to Die-Hard Base With Attack on Democratic Women

The House passed a resolution this month condemning Trump’s comments that the four female lawmakers should “go back” to their “corrupt and inept” countries (three of the four were born in the U.S.). Asked on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday whether another resolution should be passed condemning Trump’s tweets this weekend, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

Multiple Democratic lawmakers, including several members of the Maryland congressional delegation, rushed to Cummings’s defense on Saturday. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland said Trump “hits new low with his slashing attack.” Another, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, announced that he was unfollowing Trump on Twitter.

“It regularly ruins my day to read it,” Murphy tweeted. “So I’m just going to stop.” That still leaves the president with more than 62 million followers on the social media site.

The Baltimore Sun newspaper on Saturday penned a blistering editorial following Trump’s tweets, concluding, “better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.” The Twitter hashtag #WeAreBaltimore has also been trending.

(Updates with Trump tweet in sixth paragraph.)

—With assistance from Mark Niquette.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.