Politics

Trump tweets video of Elijah Cummings calling Baltimore ‘drug infested’

President Trump on Wednesday tweeted a video clip that shows Rep. Elijah Cummings describing his hometown of Baltimore as a “drug-infested area” during a Congressional hearing 20 years ago.

“The Radical Left Dems went after me for using the words ‘drug-infested’ concerning Baltimore. Take a look at Elijah C.,” Trump wrote.

On the 30-second clip, the Maryland Democrat says, “This morning, I left my community of Baltimore, a drug-infested area where a lot of the drugs that we’re talking about today have already taken the lives of so many children.”

“The same children that I watched 14 or 15 years ago as they grew up, now walking around like zombies. This is only 40 miles away from here,” he adds.

The clip was also posted earlier Wednesday by the Trump presidential campaign’s @TrumpWarRoom account.

It was taken from a four-hour-plus hearing on the “narcotics threat from Columbia” that was held by a House government reform subcommittee and shown live on the C-SPAN2 cable channel on Aug. 6, 1999.

Trump’s posting of the video marked the latest volley in his war of words against the Maryland Democrat and House Oversight Committee chair since Trump on Saturday accused him of acting like a “brutal bully” by shouting at Homeland Security acting secretary Kevin McAleenan about the treatment of migrant children detained at the southern border.

Trump went on to Cummings’ district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and a “very dangerous & filthy place.”

Congressional Democrats have called Trump a racist over his attacks on Cummings, one of five black committee chairpersons in the House of Representatives.

Earlier Wednesday, Cummings turned down an invitation from Housing Secretary Ben Carson to tour a low-income housing project in Baltimore, citing a scheduling conflict, the Washington Examiner reported.