Seventh U.S. Congressional District, Baltimore, Maryland |
In case anyone missed it, the president
of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th
congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human
being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,”
“Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested
mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention
Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which
are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western
Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed
at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a
former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S.
House of Representatives since 1996.
Twitter
message from Donald J. Trump:
@realDonaldTrump
· Jul 27, 2019
Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully,
shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about
conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR
WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA......
Twitter
message from Donald J. Trump:
@realDonaldTrump
....As
proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient
& well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and
rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help
clean up this very dangerous & filthy place
It’s not hard to see what’s going
on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr.
Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as
it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so
many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed
Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient
& well run," which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with
all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the
Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a
ticking time bomb."
In pointing to the 7th
District, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks
like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He
wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they
write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It
wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort
McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where
the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning
to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority
black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only
surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people”
or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the
congressman “go back” to where he came from.
This is a president who will
happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’
criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as
chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a
racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox
& Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming
Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. Fox News rang the
bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into
action.
As heartening as it has been to
witness public figures rise to Charm City’s defense on Saturday, from native
daughter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, we would
above all remind Mr. Trump that the 7th District, Baltimore included, is part
of the United States that he is supposedly governing. The White House has far
more power to effect change in this city, for good or ill, than any single
member of Congress including Mr. Cummings. If there are problems here, rodents
included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone’s, perhaps more because
he holds the most powerful office in the land.
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Finally, while we would not sink
to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed
to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we
would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of
war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter
of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted
there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling
most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post.
Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin
living in your neighborhood than to be one.
This editorial was written by the
Baltimore Sun Editorial Board. If you
would like to submit a letter to the editor, please send it to
talkback@baltimoresun.com.