Washington - The Baltimore Sun newspaper published a scathing
editorial on Sunday against President Donald Trump, defending conditions
in an urban district of the eastern US city that Trump had attacked,
as well as the US lawmaker who represents the district.
The daily newspaper, in an editorial titled "Better to have a few
rats than to be one," pointed to the district's landmarks and a
median income above the national average. The US president on
Saturday called the district a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested
mess" and said "no human being would want to live there".
The newspaper's editorial board said that, while it did not wish to
"sink to name-calling", it would "tell the most dishonest man to ever
occupy the Oval Office" that it's "better to have some vermin living
in your neighborhood than to be one."
The editorial said that Trump sees attacking African American members
of Congress as good politics as it "warms the cockles of the white
supremacists who love him." The president was not fooling most
Americans into believing "he's even slightly competent," it added.
Trump touched off the latest racially charged round of accusations
with a series of tweets on Saturday in which he said Cummings had
done little to help his district in more than 20 years in office.
He upped the ante on Sunday by firing off another attack, saying
Cummings had "failed badly!" and not addressed crime in Baltimore
because he has been too busy using the House Oversight Committee "to
hurt innocent people and divide our Country!"
Cummings is chairman of the committee and is the driving force behind
several investigations into the Trump administration. The 68-year-old
also has denounced Trump's migration policies affecting the US-Mexico
border, especially the conditions in detention centres and treatment
of children separated from their parents.
Trump broadened his attack in his Sunday tweets by naming House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had defended Cummings on Saturday and
called Trump's tweets racist.
The US president suggested someone should explain to Pelosi "that
there is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that
Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district
and the City of Baltimore."
He also said conditions in Pelosi's district in San Francisco make it
"not even recognizeable."
Neither Pelosi, who was born in Baltimore and whose father also
served as mayor of the city decades ago, nor Cummings responded to
Trump's comments Sunday.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney defended the
president's tweets, saying they were not racist but were responses to
Cummings' criticism of conditions at the southern border.
"When the president hears lies like that, he's going to fight back,"
Mulvaney told Fox News. "It has absolutely zero to do with race. This
is what the president does. He fights, and he's not wrong to do so."
The latest furore over Trump's tweets comes after he touched off a
firestorm earlier this month by criticizing four non-white
congresswomen, calling them un-American and saying they should "go
back" to the countries they came from.
All four are US citizens and only one of them was not born in the
United States - Representative Ilhan Omar, a Muslim who arrived as a
refugee from Somalia and became a naturalized US citizen.