President Trump said Baltimore residents are “living in hell” on Tuesday, firing another shot in his ongoing battle against Representative Elijah Cummings (D., Md.).
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, Trump claimed that “thousands” of African-American Baltimore residents have reached out to him to express gratitude for the attention he called to Baltimore’s sanitation and crime problems in recent days.
“Those people are living in hell in Baltimore,” Trump said, according to CBS News. “They’re largely African-American . . . and they really appreciate what I’m doing, and they let me know it.”
Trump continued to blame Cummings for Baltimore’s state of disrepair on Tuesday and called for an investigation of how the “billions” of dollars in federal aid he said had been given to the city in recent years was spent.
The feud began on Saturday morning when Trump challenged the House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman to redirect the resources currently being used to investigate his administration toward probing the rodent “infestation” plaguing Baltimore, part of which lies in Cummings district.
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……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2019
Reverend Al Sharpton came to Cummings’s defense over the weekend and accused Trump of racism in response to the tweet. Trump pushed back against that claim on Tuesday, telling reporters, “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.”