'Too bad!': Trump jokes about 3 a.m. break-in at Elijah Cummings's home
President Trump on Friday joked about a middle-of-the-night break-in at the Baltimore home of his nemesis Rep. Elijah Cummings over the weekend. Cummings was at home during the incident but was not harmed.
“Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed,” the president tweeted. “Too bad!”
The message drew criticism from Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.
This is so unnecessary. 🙄
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) August 2, 2019
Police said the burglary at Cummings’s home in West Baltimore occurred at 3:40 Saturday morning, hours before Trump’s controversial tweets attacking the Democratic congressman and calling the city a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
A spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department said Thursday that it is unknown if any property was taken. In a statement Friday, Cummings said he was “notified of the intrusion by my security system.”
“I scared the intruder away by yelling before the person gained entry into the residential portion of the house,” Cummings said.
Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had been critical of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant children at the southern U.S. border. The panel also recently voted to give Cummings the power to subpoena communications between Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law.
Trump’s attacks against Cummings, who is black, and the predominantly African-American district he represents, along with the president’s repeated denunciations of four congresswomen of color, have been widely viewed as racist.
The president has denied they were motivated by racism.
“I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.
The president also dismissed a poll showing 80 percent of African-Americans consider him a racist as “fake news.”
___
Read more from Yahoo News:
Trump doubles down on Cummings attacks, disparages Baltimore
Baltimore paper blasts Trump: 'Better to have a few rats than to be one'
The Obamas offer rare rebukes of Trump over attacks on Baltimore
Trump trash-talks 'con man' Al Sharpton as Baltimore feud drags on
Trump may think being called a racist will help him win in 2020
Trump dismisses poll showing African-Americans think he's racist
Trump: 'I am the least racist person anywhere in the world'
