On Sunday, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney appeared on Fox News with host Chris Wallace, who grilled the Trump administration official over the president’s tweets regarding Baltimore:
WALLACE: Well, let’s start with what we didn’t anticipate and that is the Twitter war. President Trump attacked Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings on Saturday, saying that his district in the Baltimore area of Maryland is worse, worse conditions, more dangerous than along the southern border.
Wallace showed President Trump’s tweets about Rep. Elijah Cummings’ (D-MD) congressional district, which includes part of Baltimore.
The host continued:
In fact, median household income in the district is in the upper half nationally, and Columbia, Maryland, which is part of the Cummings’ district, has been called the safest city in America. So, what is the president talking about?
Mulvaney replied, and the following exchange took place:
MULVANEY: And I think Maryland is – I think on a per capita basis, or per household basis, the richest state in America. You still see pictures on the Internet of complete poverty in Baltimore, Maryland.
What this is about though is the president fighting back against what he saw as being illegitimate attacks about the border in the hearing this week. If you go online, you can see the questioning that Elijah Cummings did of Kevin McAleenan regarding the conditions at the border. Mr. Cummings saying that children were sleeping or sitting in their own feces, that’s just not right. It’s not accurate, born by the fact, by the way, that Mr. Cummings has not been to the border in recent memory, certainly not during this administration. And when the president hears lies like that, he is going to fight back and that’s what you saw in those tweets.
WALLACE: This goes back to what happened with the four members of “The Squad.” Nobody objects to the president defending his border policies, but this seems, Mick, to be the worst kind of … racial stereotyping. … Black congressman, majority black district – I mean, no human being would want to live there? Is he saying people that live in Baltimore are not human beings?
MULVANEY: So, Chris, help me with this. When the president attacks AOC plus three, when he attacks “The Squad” last week, he gets accused of being a racist. When Nancy Pelosi does it a few days later, the left and many members of the media, not you in particular, I want to make that clear, come to Nancy’s defense. How it couldn’t possibly be racist. That she was simply attacking their ideas.
The president is doing the same. The president is attacking Mr. Cummings for saying things that are not true about the border.
I think it’s right for the president to raise the issue of – look, I was in Congress for six years. If I had poverty in my district like they have in Baltimore, if I had crime in my district like they have in Chicago, if I had homelessness like they have in San Francisco, and I spent all of my time in Washington, D.C. chasing down this Mueller investigation, this bizarre impeachment crusade, I’d get fired. And I think the president’s right to raise that. It has absolutely zero to do with race.
WALLACE: You say it has zero to do with race – there is a clear pattern here, Mick. The fact is that before his inaugural – before his inauguration, the president tweeted about John Lewis, a black congressman that he should — this is before his inauguration, he should spend time in his crime-infested district.
Then, two weeks ago, he goes after these four members of “The Squad,” all women of color, and says they should go back to the crime-infested countries from which they come. Then he talks about Elijah Cummings and he says his district is rat and rodent-infested. Infested. It sounds like vermin. It sounds subhuman. And these are all six members of Congress who are people of color.
MULVANEY: I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines.
WALLACE: I’m not reading between the lines. I’m reading the lines.
MULVANEY: Does anyone watching this program dispute the fact or the possibility that if Adam Schiff has said the same thing about the border, that the president would be attacking Adam Schiff the exact same way today?
WALLACE: I don’t think he’d be talking about his crime-infested, rodent-infested district.
MULVANEY: He very well could. It has zero to do with the fact that Adam is Jewish and everything to do with Adam would just be wrong if he were saying that. This is what the president does. He fights and he’s not wrong to do so…
WALLACE: You’re completely comfortable with him saying that this is a rodent-infested district and no human being would want to live there? You’re comfortable with that personally?
MULVANEY: Have you seen some of the pictures on the Internet? Just this morning from the conditions in Baltimore, Maryland. Have you seen them?
WALLACE: You can do that in any inner city in America.
MULVANEY: You absolutely could.
WALLACE: And you could argue, why doesn’t the president do something to stop it?
MULVANEY: The richest state in the nation, the richest state in the nation has abject poverty like that. A state, by the way, dominated for generations by Democrats. I think it’s fair to have that conversation.
On Sunday, President Trump sent out a tweet regarding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) congressional district:
Speaking of failing badly, has anyone seen what is happening to Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco. It is not even recognizable lately. Something must be done before it is too late. The Dems should stop wasting time on the Witch Hunt Hoax and start focusing on our Country!
Among the deluge of responses, some called the president out over what they believe is an attempt at “damage control.”
So this is your lame attempt at damage control…going after #Pelosi’s district to make it look like you weren’t a despicable RACIST yesterday with #Cummings. You’re pathetic. #Trump