President Trump's suggestion that U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., help fix the "rat and rodent-infested" neighborhoods of Baltimore he represents has prompted charges of racism.
The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday the latest move in the battle: Cummings refused Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson's invitation to tour a HUD facility in Baltimore.
Now Trump has found some support for his description of Baltimore as "infested," even though the comment concerned drugs.
It was Cummings himself who said in 1999, "This morning I left my community of Baltimore, a drug-infested area," according to a video uncovered by the Trump War Room:
Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings in 1999: "This morning I left my community of Baltimore, a DRUG INFESTED area" where people are "walking around like zombies." pic.twitter.com/MGUDfXL7UC
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) July 31, 2019
One Twitter user wrote, "He must be a racist for calling it out like that."
And Twitter news aggregator Twitchy said, "Would you believe that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings wasn't always so enamored with Baltimore?"
"What? He just called Baltimore, [the city] he represents, a 'drug-infested' area? That makes Elijah Cummings a racist," said talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday.
"We had a caller yesterday who make a brilliant point. If you hear the words 'infested' or 'infestation' and 'vermin,' and you think 'racist,' then you’re the racist. When did this happen? When did this definition of 'vermin' become racist? When did using the word 'infestation' become racist? It isn’t, except to these people. These people are the racists. The racists are the people in the media and the people on the left who are out there accusing everybody else of being racist."
Fox News analyst Brit Hume said of Trump's infestation remarks: "For Pete’s sake he’s talking about animals! He’s talking about rodents! He isn’t talking about people. Look, we cannot possibly be at a place now in America where you cannot criticize the condition of somebody’s congressional district who happens to be African-American without being accused of racism. You know, for a long time if you were critical of someone who was of darker skin color -- uh, black or brown -- you were accused of racism. Now you’re talking about the rodents in their districts and that’s racism. My own view of that is it’s positively absurd."
The Gateway Pundit noted Republicans such as Mitt Romney and the Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace joined Democratic Party lawmakers in casting Trump's tweets to Cummings as racist.
Trump told reporters Tuesday, "People living in Baltimore are real happy that I’m bringing up the fact that it’s like living in hell."
He said, "The most unsafe city in the country, in our country is Baltimore."
According to FBI statistics, Baltimore has the third-highest number of incidents of violent crime per 100,000 residents, with 2,027.
The back-and-forth started after Trump wrote on Twitter that conditions in Baltimore were "dangerous."
Cummings chairs the House Oversight Committee, which is continuing the Democrats' war against the president over, among other things, the Russia collusion investigation.
Cummings' committee has voted to subpoena personal emails and texts of top White House aides, including Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. The president suggested Cummings do some oversight in his own district.