Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore Apartment Was Robbed Just Hours Before Trump’s Twitter Attack On The City
According to The Daily Mail, police in the city of Baltimore are investigating a burglary that targeted a home owned by U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings. The robbery happened in the early morning on Saturday, just hours before President Donald Trump would go on the offensive and insult Cummings’ hometown.
The attack happened shortly before 4 a.m. and occurred not in Rep. Cummings’s primary residence, but rather a property he rents out, as reported by Fox News. The address of the residence was on Madison Avenue northwest of downtown Baltimore and the city’s Inner Harbor, in the neighborhood called Druid Heights.
Druid Heights is described as an area with a moderately high frequency of crime. Baltimore police have made more than 1,300 arrests in the area in the past year, including 129 burglaries, 143 thefts, and 289 assaults. It is not yet known what — if anything — was taken from the break-in.
The incident comes at a politically inopportune time for the congressman. Cummings had just been the target of a number of attacks by President Trump on the state of the representative’s home district. Cummings earned the president’s ire after his sharp critique on conditions at immigration centers on the border with Mexico.
“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there,” President Trump wrote on Twitter.
“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 that he has helped to create over many years of incompetent leadership,” he later added in another tweet.
….As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2019
After those tweets, Trump received considerable criticism, especially for using the word “rodent infested” to describe Baltimore. CNN host Victor Blackwell claimed that the term was a dog-whistle for the president, as Blackwell claimed Trump only used the term “rodent infested” to refer to areas heavily populated with African-American populations, per The Washington Post.
Other politicians, including several candidates hoping to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, tweeted their support for the representative while condemning Trump’s “racist” tweets.
Donald Trump’s tweets are ugly and racist. They’re purposefully designed to turn us against one another. We cannot let that happen. Instead, we must follow my friend Elijah Cummings’ example and keep doing the work for the American people. https://t.co/t7heu6k3wq
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) July 27, 2019
I am proud our campaign headquarters is in Rep. Elijah Cummings' district. Baltimore has become home to my team and it's disgraceful the president has chosen to start his morning disparaging this great American city.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 27, 2019
However, Trump has characteristically fired back at Cummings, unearthing a video of the congressman where he refers to his city in similar terms.
“I left my community of Baltimore, a drug-infested area where a lot of the drugs we’re talking about today have already taken the lives of so many children,” Cummings said in the clip.
