The editorial board for The Baltimore Sun hit back at President Donald Trump on Saturday after he disparaged Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and called Baltimore “filthy” and a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
The editorial board of the newspaper said it “would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner”. However, they published some a strongly worded piece.
“We,” the board wrote, “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.”
However, a top White House aide has defended Donald Trump’s disparaging tweets about an influential black Democratic congressman and his district as a “justified response to the politician’s criticism of the US president’s border policies.
Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Mr Trump was upset over what he perceives to be inaccurate statements by Elijah Cummings about conditions in which children are being held in detention at the border with Mexico.
Mr Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday that “when the president hears lies like that, he’s going to fight back”.
At a hearing last week, Mr Cummings, who represents Balitmore in Maryland, accused a top US administration official of wrongly calling reports of filthy, overcrowded border facilities “unsubstantiated”.
Mr Mulvaney denies that Trump’s Twitter comments Saturday were racist and says Mr Trump would criticise any lawmaker who spoke unfairly about his policies.
Mr Trump lashed out in tweets against Mr Cummings, the powerful House Oversight Committee chairman, claiming his Baltimore-area district is “considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States”.
It was the president’s latest assault on a prominent politician, and the people he represents, two weeks after he sparked nationwide controversy with tweets directed at four congresswomen.
His comments against Mr Cummings, who leads multiple investigations of the president’s governmental dealings, drew swift condemnation from Democrats.
Statements from a spokesman for the state’s Republican governor and from the lieutenant governor defended Mr Cummings’s district and its people.
Mr Trump called Mr Cummings a “brutal bully” after his public tongue-lashing of top Homeland Security officials over conditions for migrants detained along the southern border.
“As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded,” Mr Trump tweeted.
“Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”