Amid the outrage over President Trump calling Baltimore a “rat and rodent infested mess,” there was no kerfuffle over Sen. Bernie Sanders offering a very negative reaction to the condition of the city in 2015.
The Baltimore Sun reported December 8, 2015:
Hoping to reach African-American voters nationally in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday toured the West Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray was arrested — and likened the poverty he observed to that of the Third World.
The independent senator, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, walked the streets of Sandtown-Winchester for about 20 minutes, joined by community leaders and a swarm of cameras that mostly blocked his view of boarded rowhomes and crumbling marble steps. A handful of residents joined the spectacle, and occasionally broke out in chants of Gray’s name.
The scene provided dramatic visuals of the economic inequality Sanders has made the center of his campaign, offering a new backdrop from which to argue for a higher minimum wage, tuition-free public college and tougher federal regulations of the nation’s banking sector.
“Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think you’re in a wealthy nation,” Sanders told reporters later at the Freddie Gray Empowerment Center in Bolton Hill. “You would think that you were in a Third World country.” (emphasis added)
“But today what we’re talking about is a community in which half of the people don’t have jobs,” Sanders said. “We’re talking about a community in which there are hundreds of buildings that are uninhabitable.”
This, of course, was during the Obama era.
But today, Trump criticized conditions in the city after one of its representatives, Elijah Cummings, has continued to dog Trump with hearings and investigations.
AFP reports:
US President Donald Trump was hit with new accusations of racism Saturday after he attacked a prominent African-American lawmaker and branded the majority black city of Baltimore an “infested mess.”
Trump’s outburst came in a series of sharply worded tweets aimed at Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings — a high-profile critic of Trump’s administration whose district covers much of Baltimore.
“Cumming (sic) District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” the president wrote, calling it “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.”
“No human being would want to live there,” he said — in an attack ostensibly provoked by Cummings’ criticism of the harsh conditions facing would-be asylum seekers at the Mexican border.
“Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous,” Trump said, according to AFP.
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