During a gathering with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, President Donald Trump claimed that Black voters in Baltimore were elated about his attacks on the city and Rep. Elijah Cummings.
The leader of the free world began the July 30 conference by denying that his tweets toward the Maryland representative and his mostly-black district of Baltimore were racist.
Tweets that Trump fired off over the weekend described the representative’s district as a “rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” The attacks began, more than likely not coincidentally, not long after the airing of a 6 a.m. “Fox & Friends” Saturday segment making the exact same claims about Cummings’ district and his supposed failures to help his constituents.
Targeting Cummings, the president tweeted, “If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.” In another tweet, he said, “The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people. Now, lowest unemployment in U.S. history, and only getting better. Elijah Cummings has failed badly!”
The posts have spawned renewed allegations of racism, which Trump had just been accused of based on tweets he made two weeks ago about freshman Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.
“I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,” Trump told journalists Tuesday after slamming Rev. Al Sharpton, whom he’s also virtually sparred with, as “a racist.” “What I’ve done for African-Americans in two and a half years, no president has been able to do anything like it.”
After taking credit for 6 percent unemployment rate within the Black community, a downward trend that began while Barack Obama was in office, he then added, “the African-American community is so thankful they’ve called me and they’ve said finally, somebody is telling the truth.” The dig was directed at Cummings and Baltimore.
“The African-American people have been calling the White House, they have never been so happy as what a president has done,” the commander-in-chief went on before once again bragging about unemployment numbers. “They are so happy that I pointed out that the corrupt politics of Baltimore. It’s filthy dirty, it’s so horrible, and they are happy as hell.”
“The fact is African-American people love the job I’m doing because I’m working for them, I’m not working for the politicians,” he added, saying he’d visit Baltimore “at the right time.”
