Like clockwork, the left has issued its weekly Evil Trump alert. This week, he was decried as a “racist” after he rebuked Elijah Cummings (D-MD) for “bullying” Kevin McAleenan and described Baltimore with language that only Democrats and their media allies are allowed to use. The problem is not that Mr. Trump confronted Democrats with non-truths, but that he dared to confront untouchable constituents of the party at all.
Donald Trump has been racially insensitive on occasion, but confronting Cummings was not one of them. Even Reverend Bill Owens, President of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, told CNN Trump is no racist. Democrats know this, but claim to just know the term “infested” is a racist trope for non-white communities.
Our system of checks and balance requires the president to confront the legislature; therefore, President Trump should confront powerful (e.g. Cummings) and influential (e.g. Ocasio-Cortez) opponents with no consideration for race or gender. Moreover, minority individuals, when part of a political-action group with special interests, are rightly subject to criticism and confrontation over their actions and comments.
Trump accused Cummings, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, of “bullying” McAleenan, acting director of Homeland Security (DHS). Cummings complained, but many reports confirmed Trump’s view, including the Baltimore Sun’s report the chair had “ripped into” McAleenan. The Washington Examiner wrote “Cummings goes ballistic at DHS head” and Politico felt he “repeatedly shut down McAleenan’s attempts to speak.”
The President rebuked Cummings for shaming the employees of Homeland Security: there’s no racism in defending the honor of government employees, especially when 37.1% of Homeland Security’s employees are non-white and 51% of the border agents are Latino (source: US Customs). C-SPAN footage clearly shows Cummings angry outbursts.
Baltimore resident Matt Walsh confirmed, “Trump is right about Baltimore and everyone knows it” (source: Daily Wire). To wit, the BBC reported Baltimore is “what poverty in America looks like” because “the neighborhoods are falling apart.” The Washington Post reported fourteen Baltimore neighborhoods have life expectancies 20 years lower than the national average.
Orkin Pest Control ranks Baltimore #8 on its list of most rodent-infested US cities, and the Baltimore Sun panned the city’s condition: “Food containers, balled-up clothes, paper, banana peels, plastic bags, and tons of other pieces of litter line the shoulders of roads, pile up in alleys and are strewn across fields and yards.” In 2015, the New York Times Magazine reported Baltimore as “nothing less than a failure of order and governance the likes of which few cities have seen in years.”
Trump was only confirming what everyone knows, but his foes accused him of “cheap shots” on black neighborhoods. That is a double standard, when Barack Obama referred to inner cities as “crime-infested” and Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh (D-MD) shrieked “you can smell the rats” and Elijah Cummings himself described the city as “drug-infested” on C-SPAN.
Baltimore’s Democratic leaders gathered to bemoan Trump’s lack of politesse – right before blaming him for not “already” rescuing the city. After fifty straight years of Democratic mayors, how “true” was it to blame a first-term Republican president for Baltimore’s woes? Real leaders would own their failures and stop repeating the same mistakes.
It is fair to question the kindness and necessity of the President’s pointed criticism of Cummings and Baltimore. Tactically, it was in-kind politics: a Democrat tried to shame a Republican for immigrant camps, and a Republican tried to shame a Democrat for conditions back home. Strategically, the tweet called attention to House Democrats, who only recently acknowledged the border crisis.
The left presumes Cummings race was the underlying reason for Trump’s rebuke, but the message was clear and relevant: the chairman should focus on building up his district rather than tearing down Homeland Security. It is time for realpolitik in the Democratic Party, which has cried “racist” so often there is growing incredulity in the electorate.
In a July Gallup poll, only 7% of the population believed racism was the nation’s top problem (immigration was first at 27% and poor government was second at 23%). Many don’t believe criticizing a Democrat, who happens to be black, is real racial animus (such as the gun-toting Old Miss students instagram post). Such a political ploy confounds the moral majority who don’t hate.
Democrats should argue the issues with this president without injecting acid-tongued propaganda. A little honesty is in order, after initiating this presidency with now-debunked claims (Russian collusion, tanking economy and stock markets, as well as the break-out of World War III). Every US president has a job to do, and cries of “wolf” shouldn’t deter Trump from confronting Democrats when they blunder.
