White House defends Trump criticism of Elijah Cummings and Baltimore district

WASHINGTON — Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s attacks on the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Trump’s description of the lawmaker’s majority black district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” had “absolutely zero to do with race."

Mulvaney, appearing on both “Fox News Sunday” and CBS’s “Face the Nation,” defended the president’s weekend tweets directed at Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), saying they were in response to Cummings’ criticism during a House Oversight Committee hearing last week of the conditions at immigrant detention centers housing children.

“I think the president is right to raise that and I think it has absolutely zero to do with race," Mulvaney said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump, in a series of Saturday tweets, described Cummings’ Maryland district, which includes Baltimore, as a “rodent infested mess” and said “no human being would want to live there.” The tweets sparked widespread condemnation, including from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who labeled the missives “racist.”

Fox News host Chris Wallace pressed Mulvaney on Trump’s “pattern” of using "infested" to describe the congressional districts of six lawmakers of color. Wallace read from Trump’s tweets last year, calling on Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) to focus on his “crime infested” Atlanta district, and earlier this month his tweets urging Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.”

“Infested. It sounds like vermin, it sounds subhuman. And these are all six members of Congress who are people of color," Wallace said.

Mulvaney said Wallace was "reading between the lines." Wallace responded, “I'm not reading between the lines, I'm reading the lines.”

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mulvaney said he could “understand why” Trump’s recent tweets could be perceived as racist by some, “but that doesn’t mean it’s racist.”

"The president is pushing back against what he sees as wrong. It's how he's done in the past and he'll continue to do in the future,” Mulvaney said.

On Sunday, Trump continued to rail against Cummings who, as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has approved a series of congressional subpoenas and lawsuits aimed at obtaining the president’s financial records and at compelling former top White House aides to testify.

“He just wants to use his Oversight Committee to hurt innocent people and divide our Country!” Trump tweeted Sunday morning after a “Fox and Friends” segment that was critical of Cummings’ leadership.

Democrats said Trump was using his tweets to distract from other issues, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony before lawmakers last week.

House Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” said Trump’s tweets “are designed to distract attention from allegations about his conduct that came from the committee in the Mueller hearings this week.”

“He’s just trying to change the subject, which is what he usually does,” Nadler said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, also a guest on “This Week,” described Trump’s tweets as part of a “bait and switch” strategy.

“Everyone goes chasing after those tweets; he keeps the attention off the thing we should be talking about,” de Blasio said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), speaking Sunday at an unrelated news conference in Manhattan, told reporters: “Every day you see what the president tweets and you just shake your head and say 'He couldn’t have really said that,' but he did."

Schumer added: "There are hundreds of thousands of people in Baltimore struggling to have a good life. They don’t need to be demeaned by the president or anybody else.”

Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, asked about Trump’s tweets on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” sided with Trump’s argument that the tweets were in response to Cummings’ questioning of border security officials.

"I didn't do the tweets...I can't talk about why he did what he did, but I am disappointed in people like Congressman Cummings, who are attacking border patrol agents,” Scott said.

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” pushed back on Trump’s characterization of Cummings, saying the veteran lawmaker 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.“

“I wouldn't be doing this, I wouldn't be tweeting this way,” Hurd said.

With Lisa L. Colangelo