Trump Escalates Attack on Cummings, Oversight Chairman and Prominent Black Lawmaker
Cummings has served in Congress since 1996.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump extended his attacks on a prominent black lawmaker, Elijah Cummings into a third day, bringing a polarizing figure -- Reverend Al Sharpton -- into a fray that critics contend has racist undertones.
“Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation. 25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull...” Trump said Monday on Twitter. “Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!”
In an earlier post, Trump called Sharpton “a con man” and “a troublemaker” who he accused of hating white people and police officers.
The comments mark an escalation of Trump’s rhetoric over the weekend, much of which he spent attacking Cummings, a Democrat from Baltimore who is chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
The latest Trump-instigated feud has prompted accusations that president is deliberately going after a black lawmaker and a majority-black city as an appeal to his base. The move comes ahead of this week’s Democratic presidential debates in Detroit, another U.S. city where blacks constitute the majority of residents.
On Monday afternoon, Trump held talks with “Inner City Pastors,” according to a tweet from the president. The meeting wasn’t on the official White House schedule but pastors said they were invited before Trump criticized Cummings.
After the discussion, Bill Owens, president of the Coalition of African American Pastors, told reporters he finds it “hard to believe” that Trump is racist. Owens said “it would be good” for the president to visit Baltimore.
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 on Monday night renewed his attacks on Cummings, tweeting, “Billions of dollars have been pumped in over the years, but to no avail. The money was stolen or wasted. Ask Elijah Cummings where it went.” Trump didn’t elaborate.
Trump branded Cummings’s district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” in which “no human being would want to live,” prompting a rebuke from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats.
Pelosi, a Baltimore native, defended Cummings as a champion “for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague.”
Although he’s now blaming Cummings for conditions in Baltimore, Trump pledged in his 2016 Republican nomination acceptance speech 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.”
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.
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.
--With assistance from Mark Niquette and Jennifer Jacobs.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net;Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Joshua Gallu
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