GOP STRATEGIST DEPICTS BALTIMORE AS FILTHY & OVERRUN BY BLIGHT

…GOP Strategist, Kimberly Klacik

The president calls a long-time, respected, Elijah Cummings a “racist”.

One White House official actually said that Trump was looking for someone to attack, and that’s when he decided to go after both Elijah Cummings and then after Rev. Al Sharpton.  The shot at Sharpton was because while visiting Baltimore, Al Sharpton had spoken negatively about President Trump's remarks about Representative Cummings.

This all started when a GOP Strategist, Kimberly Klacik, a Baltimore area Republican who also just happens to be a young Black woman.  Of course, Trump was watching his favorite TV show, Fox & Friends, when Ms. Klacik appeared on the show talking about video footage she had taken depicting Cummings’s district as being overrun by trash and blight. 

This was all Trump needed to fire up his twitter machine.

Klacik did not respond to all the requests for a comment, but in her own tweet she suggested that Fox News had reached out to her after she had filmed and posted on social media, the footage of trash-strewn areas of Cummings’s district.  She did say that this was done at the urging of local Baltimore residents who had sought her help in removing the debris.  Klacik appears regularly on the local Baltimore Fox station as  a Republican Strategist.  “There is a crisis at the border but there is also a crisis in Baltimore,” Klacik says in the video segment. 

Trump has gone after Cummings and any others that were involved with supporting Cumming’s oversight committee that he chairs.  He was the one that authorized a subpoena that could sweep up emails from Trump’s daughter and son-in-law.  Trump was also highly annoyed that Cummings stood alongside Democratic leaders discussing the possibility of a future impeachment hearing following the testimony by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel. 

He was particularly on fire when Cummings, the longtime Democratic lawmaker, lambasted Trump’s acting head of Homeland Security (HSA) over reports from the border of “a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower.  None of us would have our children in that position,” Cummings said this during a hearing earlier this month. “They are human beings.”

It was almost exactly an hour after the Fox & Friends show that the president weighed in with his tweets calling Cummings’s district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” saying that “no human being would want to live there” and dubbing congressman Cummings as “a brutal bully.”

Then, as usual, Trump took off to one of his golf courses.  But the onslaught against Cummings would span more than two full days and 19 disgusting individual Trump tweets, during which Trump would also accuse Cummings of doing “NOTHING for his very poor, very dangerous and very badly run district”.  He bemoaned Cummings’ “radical ‘oversight’ ” and, finally, he accused Cummings, an African American lawmaker who represents a district that is nearly 53% black……..….here it comes: “of being a racist.”

“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,” Trump wrote, all in one tweet that: “His radical ‘oversight’ is a joke!”

Trump’s sustained attacks against Cummings reveal the extent to which the president stokes a grudge, while totally believing in Fox News and spewing back its more right-wing content to the world.  This forces his allies to scramble to respond, and in picking this fight with Cummings, Trump dragged both his party and the nation into another round of racial conundrums.  Here we are, 16 months from Election Day, Trump is threatening to shape, if not totally overwhelm, the 2020 campaign with his focus on racism.. 

“Every day, you shake your head,” said former Ohio governor John Kasich (R), who says he is considering a 2020 primary challenge of Trump. “Attacking a major city is like nothing we’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen this kind of behavior and rhetoric. And frankly, I’ve never seen so many people just ignore it. It’s shocking.”

 Kasich was also critical of his fellow Republicans, almost none of whom publicly condemned the president for his latest round of racially charged tweets: “There is a culture of silence in the party,” he said. “I guess they just want to gulp and get through to tomorrow.”

At the Capitol, Republican senators repeatedly avoided the issue as they made their way to the chamber. “Another act of political theater,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said, declining to answer whether he agrees with Trump’s charge that Cummings is racist. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE.) urged reporters to call her office. “I don’t do hallway interviews,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said.

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TE) said, “I like Baltimore and I like it better when the president talks about policy,” but he declined to say anything further.

At least one Trump ally did sound a public note of criticism. “I condemn the statements and will continue to condemn them,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who had served as Trump’s communications director for only 11 days in 2017.

Trump doesn’t seem to understand that as much as his racist remarks may help him with his base supporters, it also encourages those that will make sure that they show up  to vote against Donald Trump in 2020.

Copyright G. Ater 2019