Baltimore Sun Pens Fiery Response To Trump: Better To Have Rats Than Be One

The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board addressed Trump’s attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings and Baltimore in a searing op-ed.
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The editorial board for The Baltimore Sun snapped back at President Donald Trump on Saturday after he disparaged Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and called Baltimore “filthy” and a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

In a searing op-ed, the paper’s editors pointed out to the president that he has just as much responsibility for Baltimore’s faults as Cummings, whose district includes much of Baltimore, does.

“If there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone’s, perhaps more because he holds the most powerful office in the land,” the editorial board wrote.

Trump on Saturday lashed out at Cummings, a frequent critic of the president, on Twitter in response to the congressman’s comments on the inhumane conditions at the migrant detention camps at the border.

In tweets, Trump called Cummings a “brutal bully” and said that Baltimore was “FAR WORSE and more dangerous” than the camps.

Shortly before Trump’s rant, Fox News aired a segment comparing Baltimore’s more impoverished areas to the border camps.

In response to the president’s taunts, The Sun said that it was “better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood” than to be one.

The Sun categorized Trump’s feud with Cummings as a political ploy that can be filed with the president’s other recent racist attacks on other congress members of color.

“Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him,” the editors wrote.

Other Baltimore figures came out in defense of the city and Cummings after Trump’s rant.

In an emotional segment, CNN anchor Victor Blackwell reminded the president that the people who live in Baltimore are citizens of this country, too.

“People get up and go to work there. They care for their families there,” Blackwell said. “They love their children who pledge allegiance to the flag just like people who live in districts of congressmen who support you, sir.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she rejected racist attacks on Cummings and praised his leadership in Baltimore.

People also started to use the hashtag #WeAreBaltimore to show the president who his attacks were aimed at.

The Sun’s most scorching lines in the op-ed when they surrendered to “name-calling in the Trumpian manner” and delivered this rebuke:

“We would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are ‘good people’ among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post.”

Read the full op-ed here.

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