President Trump re-upped his attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) Monday night, suggesting money intended for Cummings’s West Baltimore district has been “stolen or wasted” and saying the chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee “should investigate himself.”
“Billions of dollars have been pumped in over the years, but to no avail. The money was stolen or wasted. Ask Elijah Cummings where it went. He should investigate himself with his Oversight Committee!” Trump tweeted Monday night.
The attacks are the latest salvo in a series of tweets from the president about the committee chairman, the city, and several people who came to the defense of Cummings or Baltimore.
Trump on Monday also blasted Cummings for his forceful questioning of acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.
“Elijah Cummings never even went to the Southern Border and then he screams at the very good people who, despite Congresses failure to fix the Loopholes and Asylum, make it work,” Trump tweeted.
The questioning, in which Cummings demanded McAleenan account for reports of migrant children being kept in squalid, unsanitary conditions, was the subject of Trump’s original tweet over the weekend, in which he called Cummings a “brutal bully.”
“What does that mean? What does that mean? When a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower?” Cummings asked loudly. “Come on, man. What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”
Trump’s attacks on Cummings have largely focused on conditions in Baltimore and started with the president calling the city “disgusting” and “rodent infested.” The remarks have drawn comparisons to both a similar 2017 dig at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and a series of tweets calling on four progressive minority congresswomen to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”