Facing growing accusations of racism for his incendiary tweets, President Donald Trump lashed out at his critics Monday and sought to deflect the criticism by labelling a leading black congressman as himself racist.
In the latest rhetorical shot at lawmakers of color, Trump said his weekend comments referring to Rep. Elijah Cummings' majority-black Baltimore district as a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" where "no human being would want to live" were not racist.
Instead, Trump argued, "if racist Elijah Cummings would focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district, and Baltimore itself, perhaps progress could be made in fixing the mess." "His radical 'oversight' is a joke!" Trump tweeted Sunday.
After a weekend of attacks on Cummings, the son of former sharecroppers who rose to become the powerful chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Trump expanded his attacks Monday to include a prominent Cummings defender, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who held a press conference in Baltimore to condemn the president.
"Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score," Trump tweeted ahead of the press conference, adding that the civil rights activist and MSNBC host "Hates Whites & Cops!" Sharpton fired back at the president in a tweet of his own, saying, "I do make trouble for bigots." Trump later shifted focus back to Baltimore, claiming that "Billions of dollars have been pumped in" to the city.
"The money was stolen or wasted," Trump tweeted. "Ask Elijah Cummings where it went. He should investigate himself with his Oversight Committee!" Earlier Monday, Trump convened a group of "wonderful Inner City Pastors" for an unannounced closed-door meeting to discuss the issues facing the black community Monday.
"This country needs healing. There's so much division in America along racial lines," said Bill Owens, president of the Coalition of African American Pastors, who said he was among about 20 pastors who had met with the president.
"He wanted to know from us: What should he do in America? What best can he do?" Owens said of Trump, insisting the gathering "was not damage control."
Sanders tweeted back that "Trump's lies and racism never end. While I have been fighting to lift the people of Baltimore and elsewhere out of poverty with good paying jobs, housing and health care, he has been attacking workers and the poor."
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, on Monday called the president's comments "just outrageous and inappropriate." Hogan, the new chairman of the National Governors Association, said he recently gave an address at the NGA about the angry and divisive politics that "are literally tearing America apart."
"I think enough is enough," Hogan said on the C4 Radio Show in Baltimore. "I mean, people are just completely fed up with this kind of nonsense, and why are we not focused on solving the problems and getting to work instead of who's tweeting what, and who's calling who what kind of names. I mean, it's just absurd."
"I understand that everything that Donald Trump says is offensive to some people," Mulvaney said. But he added, "The president is pushing back against what he sees as wrong. It's how he's done it in the past, and he'll continue to do it in the future."