'He should investigate himself': Trump echoes Fox News again to lash out at Elijah Cummings
Two days after starting yet another bruising national clash over race with a barrage of tweets aimed at Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, and his majority-black Baltimore district, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday night to lash out at both yet again.
After misleadingly calling Baltimore's statistics "the worst in the United States on Crime and the Economy," Trump suggested that the city had wasted aid.
"Billions of dollars have been pumped in over the years, but to no avail," Trump tweeted. "The money was stolen or wasted. Ask Elijah Cummings where it went. He should investigate himself with his Oversight Committee!"
As with Trump's first attack on Cummings, the president's Monday-night insults weren't fired off in a vacuum. Rather, they came amid hours of programming on Fox News blasting Cummings and Democrats, and backing Trump's complaints about Baltimore.
Kimberly Klacik, a Baltimore Republican whose Saturday morning appearance on Fox inspired Trump's initial attacks, was back Monday night on "The Ingraham Angle," and the president tuned in to watch. After quoting from Klacik's interview on Twitter, Trump echoed a controversial 2016 campaign slogan aimed at black voters, writing: "What the h.... do you have to lose?"
Trump's latest online missives made clear that days of withering criticism from Democrats and some Republicans have done little to temper his drive for stoking racial tensions as an electoral strategy. They also starkly highlighted how Fox News and its array of Trump-backing hosts continue to drive the president's daily agenda.
As The Washington Post's Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Costa reported, when Trump tuned in to Fox on Saturday, he was already enraged at Cummings over the Democrat's role investigating his businesses and relatives as chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and for his criticisms of Trump's border strategy.
That anger was ignited by Klacik's segment on "Fox & Friends Weekend," featuring footage of dilapidated buildings and garbage in Cummings's district. (The piece didn't note that the district includes above-average median incomes, famed institutions such as the Johns Hopkins Hospital and even rental units owned by Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.)
Within an hour of the piece airing, Trump opined on Twitter that "no human being would want to live" in "disgusting, rat and rodent infested" Baltimore and called Cummings "a brutal bully."
Thus began a familiar cycle, exemplified earlier this month when Trump sent a racist tweet aimed at four minority Democratic congresswomen and demanding that they "go back" to the "crime infested places from which they came," despite the fact that all four are U.S. citizens. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., likewise deemed Trump's broadside against Cummings a "racist attack," echoing many other prominent Democrats.
Two days of brutal verbal sparring followed. Trump first insisted that "Democrats always play the Race Card," before then accusing Cummings - who is African American and whose district is nearly 53 percent black - of himself being "racist." When the Rev. Al Sharpton joined the fray and slammed Trump for criticizing Cummings in "the most bigoted and racist way," Trump claimed in a tweet that the former Democratic presidential candidate "Hates Whites & Cops."
At the White House this week, The Post reported, some advisers worried that Trump's attacks on Cummings would distract from larger issues and declined to defend his more personal insults lobbed at the congressman. A Monday afternoon White House meeting with black pastors, many of whom supported Trump, hinted at a potential easing of hostilities.
But by Monday night, a trio of Fox News hosts went on air to enthusiastically back the president. As CNN's Brian Stelter reported, Tucker Carlson's show touted how "DEMS HAVE FAILED BALTIMORE," while Sean Hannity cued up a segment on the "CRISIS IN BALTIMORE." Laura Ingraham, meanwhile, invited Klacik back on the show under the chyron, "DEMOCRATS WRECK CITIES, BLAME TRUMP."
Amid that cable news support, Trump returned to Twitter and his familiar grievances against Cummings and Baltimore. Trump has taken particular umbrage at Cummings for criticizing his Department of Homeland Security chief during a congressional hearing earlier this month over reports of unsanitary conditions for children at border facilities.
"None of us would have our children in that position," Cummings said during the hearing. "They are human beings."
On Monday night, Trump again hit out at the congressman over that critique. "Elijah Cummings never even went to the Southern Border and then he screams at the very good people who, despite Congresses failure to fix the Loopholes and Asylum, make it work (crossings are way down and the Wall is being built)," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Even with zero Dem help, Border getting strong!"