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Trump gloats over burglary of Rep. Cummings’ house in Baltimore

‘Too bad!’ president tweets, capping a full week of attacks on the Maryland Democrat

President Donald Trump appeared to gloat Friday that a house owned by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was broken into last weekend. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo)
President Donald Trump appeared to gloat Friday that a house owned by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was broken into last weekend. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo)

President Donald Trump appeared to gloat Friday on Twitter over reports that a property in West Baltimore owned by Rep. Elijah Cummings and his wife was burglarized last weekend.

The president has singled out Cummings — a Maryland Democrat and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which is conducting multiple investigations into the Trump administration — and his native Baltimore for criticism this week in what Democrats and some Republicans have said is an overtly racist volley of insults.

[Rep. Elijah Cummings’ Baltimore residence broken into]

“Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too bad!” Trump tweeted Friday.

A spokesperson for Cummings’ congressional office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Baltimore lawmaker has largely avoided being dragged into an online confrontation with Trump, issuing a series of tweets last Saturday in response to Trump’s attacks and asking the president to help him pass legislation to lower prescription drug prices.

[Ohio, Kentucky GOP officials stand by Trump at rally after attacks on ‘squad,’ Cummings]

Republicans and Democrats alike denounced Trump’s tweet for the way it appears to mock Cummings for the burglary of his house.

“This is so low rent thug,” longtime Republican political strategist Rick Wilson tweeted of the president’s words.

The burglars broke into Cummings’ home in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Druid Heights around 3:30 a.m. last Saturday, just hours before the president initiated his broadside against the congressman, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Trump’s feud with Baltimore and Cummings began last Saturday with a series of tweets in which the president referred to the Oversight chairman’s district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Echoing a segment that had aired earlier in the day on “Fox & Friends,” Trump questioned whether Cummings was a hypocrite for condemning the living conditions at migrant detention centers on the southern U.S. border while his home district languishes.

“Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA,” Trump wrote, without citing any statistics.

The president’s critics have flown to Cummings’ defense, claiming that Trump targeted the congressman because he is black and is leading multiple investigations into the president’s administration and businesses.

Most Republican lawmakers have remained silent on the matter, unwilling to criticize Trump for his recent escalation of rhetoric against minority Democratic lawmakers.

Earlier this month, all but four House Republicans voted against a resolution condemning Trump’s racist tweets telling four minority, first-term Democratic congresswomen to “go back” to “the crime infested countries from which they came.”

Three were born in the U.S. as American citizens, and the fourth, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, moved to the U.S. from Somalia as a refugee and was naturalized as a teenager.

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