Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()
Subscribe: Android | RSS | More
When President Trump learned that Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee (which has issued subpoenas for Trump’s personal tax returns), had passed away early Thursday morning, he offered his condolences in a tweet:
My warmest condolences to the family and many friends of Congressman Elijah Cummings. I got to see first hand the strength, passion and wisdom of this highly respected political leader. His work and voice on so many fronts will be very hard, if not impossible, to replace!
Back in July, the president sent a tweet that wasn’t so kind:
Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions ar the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA….
As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming’s District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.
Trump’s July tweet hints at the role Cummings played as a noisy left-wing radical since being first elected to Congress in 1996. In July, Cummings, as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, verbally attacked acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan for more than 10 minutes, while shutting down attempts of McAleenan to respond.
{modulepos inner_text_ad}
The Hill provided the key parts of the verbal abuse heaped upon McAleenan by Cummings:
“You feel like you’re doing a great job, right?” Cummings asked during one of the most contentious moments of the hearing.
“We’re doing our level best in a very challenging situation,” McAleenan said before getting cut off again.
“What does that mean? What does that mean? When a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower?” Cummings said loudly. “Come on man. What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”…
“I get tired of folks saying, ‘Oh, oh, they just beating up on the Border Patrol. Oh, they’re just beating up on Homeland Security.’ What I am saying is, I want to concentrate on these children. And I want to make sure that they are OK,” Cummings said. “We are the greatest country in the world. We are the ones that can go anywhere in the world and save people, make sure they have diapers, make sure they have toothbrushes, make sure they’re not laying around defecating in some silver paper.”
He repeated, “Come on. We’re better than that. And I don’t want us to lose sight of that.”
McAleenan pushed back on some of Cummings’s assertions, inviting him to tour a border facility to show the lawmaker first hand that children are being reunited with their parents and conditions are improving.
McAleenan then pointed out Cummings’ hypocrisy by joining Democrats in not allowing DHS sufficient resources to handle the overwhelming flood of illegal immigrants pouring over the country’s southern border:
“We are taking care of these children thanks to the resources we finally have; they’re moving very quickly through our facilities to [the Department of] Health and Human Services to a better situation,” he said.
McAleenan also said the lack of funding from Congress directly led the conditions migrant children were left in “for way too long.”
Cummings, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, supported Black Lives Matter, the notoriously corrupt community organization ACORN even after it was exposed, Venezuela’s socialist regime under Hugo Chávez and Nicolas Maduro, and the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Cummings described CAIR as an organization that “plays a vitally important role in Washington and around the country in its advocacy for civil liberties and its fight against bigotry and discrimination.” This is the same CAIR that was designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates in November 2014.
Cummings’ voting record confirms his left-wing ideology. His score on the Freedom Index, a congressional scorecared published by this magazine that ranks U.S. representatives and senators on their adherence to the Constitution, was 22 out of 100, reflecting his disdain for the Constitution and his contempt for his oath of office.
A special election will be held in Cummings’ district to determine who will replace him. In the meantime, leadership of his committee passes to Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who sports an equally low Freedom Index rating.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
