Elijah Cummings Cites 'Moral Duty' to Voters After Trump 'Rat-Infested' Attack

By Martin Pengelly, Guardian UK

28 July 19

 

onald Trump kicked off his weekend with a stinging attack on Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chair of the House oversight committee, that opponents including House speaker Nancy Pelosi said was another example of the president deploying racist invective for political ends.

Apparently responding to the Fox News magazine show Fox & Friends, the president called Cummings a “brutal bully” and said his congressional district was both “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and “the worst run and most dangerous [district] anywhere in the United States”.

In response, Cummings said that though it was his “constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the executive branch”, it was his “moral duty” to fight for his constituents.

Cummings, who is African American, represents Maryland’s seventh congressional district, covering parts of Baltimore and neighbouring counties. The district is majority African American and has been held by Democrats since 1953.

According to the US Census Bureau the seventh, like many districts in the US, has problems with unemployment and poverty. It also has problems with gun-related crime.

The district also includes suburban areas, in one of which Trump’s housing and urban development secretary, Ben Carson, has a home.

Trump said Cummings should “help clean up this very dangerous and filthy place”. Some observers linked his tweets to widely condemned remarks he reportedly made in the Oval Office last year, calling El Salvador, Haiti and some African nations “shithole countries”.

The president later doubled down on his attacks, accusing Cummings of doing “nothing but milk Baltimore dry”.

Furthermore, the president’s vitriolic attack on a senior African American Democrat came two weeks after he told four Democratic congresswomen of colour they should “go back” to the countries they came from. Only one of the congresswomen was not born in the US and all are American citizens.

Critics observed that Trump’s attacks on “the Squad” were meant to mobilise his base and force Democrats to defend progressives who advocate policies possibly unpopular in swing states in next year’s election.

Responding to Trump on Saturday, Cummings also drew attention to a hearing on Friday about “skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs and the financial hardships that families across the nation, and in Baltimore, are facing”. Trump should work with him on the problem, he said.

Pelosi voiced support for Cummings, saying: “We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership.”

Campaigning for the presidential nomination in New Hampshire, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said Trump’s “racist tweets” were “beyond insulting. It is disgusting. This president brings shame to himself and to the White House.”

Baltimore’s mayor, Jack Young, called Trump “a disappointment to the people” of his city and to “our country, and to the world”. Cummings, he said, was a “patriot and a hero”.

The president of the Maryland State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Gerald Stansbury, said Trump should be impeached, as “America deserves a president who lifts our cities up, not one who heaps trash talk on them”.

Everything Donald Trump knows about Rep. Elijah Cummings and his Baltimore congressional district comes from the Fox & Friends segment he just watched. pic.twitter.com/Fy4RmkD5Pz

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 27, 2019

Trump called Cummings a bully for, he said, “shouting and screaming at the great men and women of Border Patrol about conditions at the southern border”.

“His Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous,” Trump said, calling it without offering evidence “the Worst in the USA”.

The Fox & Friends segment Trump appeared to have watched showed Cummings questioning the US Customs and Border Protection commissioner and acting homeland security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, this month. On Thursday, Cummings told reporters the treatment of migrant children at the southern border was “government-sponsored child abuse”.

Characteristically, the president also advocated an investigation of a political foe.

“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” he said, still without offering evidence to back up his claim. “No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!”

On Friday, Trump again suggested his predecessor in the Oval Office, Barack Obama, should be investigated as he himself has been.

Cummings is part of a House leadership that has not rushed to impeach Trump, as more than 100 Democrats in the House now advocate. But after Wednesday’s testimony by former special counsel Robert Mueller, about his report on Russian election interference, links between Trump and Moscow and possible obstruction of justice, Cummings made a passionate statement.

“I’m begging the American people to pay attention to what is going on,” he said. “Because if you want to have a democracy intact for your children, and your children’s children, and generations yet unborn we’ve got to guard this moment … This is our watch.”