President Trump’s two days of tweets ripping Rep. Elijah Cummings and his district as a “rat and rodent infested mess” brought swift rebukes from Democratic lawmakers and a defense from his acting chief of staff Sunday.
“It’s unbelievable that we have a president of the United States who attacks American cities, who attacks Americans, who attacks somebody who is a friend of mine,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Elijah Cummings is one the most decent and outstanding members of the House of Representatives.”
Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, said a president should be uniting the country.
”Our job is to bring people together to improve life of all people, not to have a racist president who attacks people because they are African American. That is a disgrace and that is why we’re going to defeat this president,” he said.
But acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Trump is just retaliating against Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, for criticizing acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan over the administration’s family separation policy.
“The president didn’t like it. Does the president speak hyperbolically? Absolutely. Have we seen this type of reaction from him before? Yes,” Mulvaney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And you will again because he pushes back, he fights back when he feels like he’s attacked.”
“I understand that everything that Donald Trump says is offensive to some people,” Mulvaney added.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was among four minority Democratic congresswomen attacked by Trump, said he continues to trash American cities.
“Our president has a hate agenda. He doesn’t have a policy agenda. That’s what he falls down on,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Rep. Will Hurd, the only African-American Republican in the House, said Trump’s tweets about Cummings aren’t the same as the “go back” postings about Tlaib and her three colleagues — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.
“I wouldn’t be doing those. I wouldn’t be tweeting this way,” the Texas Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“Chairman Cummings is someone I worked with closely on all kinds of legislation,” Hurd said. “He is someone that cares passionately about his community and has been working tirelessly his entire adult life on behalf of his country and his community and he is someone — he can defend himself.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, accused Trump of trying “to distract people from the larger reality of this country” with his tweets.
“There is a con-man reality to Donald Trump — it’s a classic bait-and-switch issue every time. The real issue in this country is that working people are stuck economically. There’s tremendous frustration out there in working America that folks aren’t getting ahead,” de Blasio, who is also a presidential hopeful, told ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
Trump over the weekend has been unleashing his furor over Cummings, writing that he “has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore.”
On Saturday, Trump told Cummings that if he spent more time in Baltimore “maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”
The post Democrats Blast Trump Over Tweets Attacking Cummings appeared first on Independent Newspapers Nigeria.
Source: Independent
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