Dem Rep. Cummings: 'Stop the hateful, incendiary comments'
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government officials must stop making "hateful, incendiary comments" that only to serve to divide and distract the nation from its real problems, including mass shootings and white supremacy, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings said Wednesday in comments aimed at President Donald Trump.
Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight Committee, did not name Trump in a speech Wednesday, but it was clear whom he was addressing. Trump disparaged Cummings and his native Baltimore in a barrage of racially-tinged tweets and insults in recent days.
"Those in the highest levels of the government must stop invoking fear, using racist language and encouraging reprehensible behavior," Cummings said in a long-scheduled speech to the National Press Club.
Use of such language "only creates more division among us and severely limits our ability to work together for the common good," Cummings said.
Cummings was responding after Trump attacked him over a series of days last month. Trump called Cummings' majority-black Baltimore district a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" where "no human being would want to live," adding that "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."
Cummings said Wednesday that, "Enough is enough," and he called on the nation to confront hatred, white supremacy and mass shootings.
"We are done with the hateful rhetoric, done with the mass shootings, done with white supremacists and domestic terrorists fighting against everything our country stands for," Cummings said. "We are better than that."
Trump said Wednesday that he doesn't think his rhetoric has contributed to violence, even though some of his...