Democrats and critics alike were up in arms after President Donald Trump’s recent infamous tweet in which he attacked Rep. Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore.
And while the president’s tweets provided plenty of fodder for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to work with, some House Democrats are worried that Trump’s anti-Baltimore tweets were a strategic trap.
According to The Hill , Rep Cedric Richmond, former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, is convinced that his attack on Cummings, the current head of the Black Caucus, is “bait.”
“I hope we don’t take the bait,” Richmond said. “The president always plays the race card when he’s having a bad news cycle. It’s easier to call people names when you don’t have anything else to point to.”
Trump, however, denied that his tweets that derided Cummings for not doing enough to help the residents of Baltimore was any type of political strategy.
“There’s no strategy. I have no strategy. There’s zero strategy,” Trump said in defense of his tweets. “All it is is I’m pointing out facts. The most unsafe city in our country is Baltimore.”
Trump’s tweets came on the heels of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony in front of Congress on the Russian election interference issue and what role Trump might have played in it.
The tweets against Cummings and Baltimore were quickly labeled as “racist” by many on the left and immediately took over the news cycle for several days.
Rep. Brenda Lawrence, a defender of Cummings, warned Democrats about focusing too much on Trump’s rhetoric and how doing so could possibly take away from important policy issues facing America — issues like healthcare that largely propelled House Democrats to victory in the 2018 mid-term elections.
“We’ve got so much work to do in Congress…. If we get sucked into this rabbit hole, spending our time reacting to every racist comment, every racist deed that this president has done,” Lawrence said.
“I really want us to stay focused. 2020 is coming,” she added.
“I hope we don’t take the bait,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond, the former head of the Black Caucus. “The president always plays the race card when he’s having a bad news cycle. It’s easier to call people names when you don’t have anything else to point to.” https://t.co/8O33A63rNX
— The Hill (@thehill) July 31, 2019
The New York Times recently revealed that a handful of White House officials recently expressed worry that Trump’s attacks on Cummings weren’t in his best interest, strategy or not, according to The Hill .
According to USA Today , a recent Quinnipiac University poll revealed on Tuesday that 51 percent of voters think Trump is racist following his attack on Cummings and the Baltimore district he represents. Forty-five percent didn’t believe Trump was a racist and five percent were unsure.
