The Baltimore home of Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was burglarized over the weekend — a development that President Donald Trump, an aggressive critic of the Maryland Democrat, said Friday was “too bad.”
“Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too bad!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.
Later Friday, Trump said he didn't intend the message as a "wise-guy tweet."
"The tweet itself was just really a repeat over what I heard over the news,” he told reporters. "That was really not meant as a wise-guy tweet."
Trump’s tweet came less than 24 hours after a report from WJZ, the CBS affiliate in Baltimore, that Cummings’ home had been burglarized early Saturday morning, hours before Trump launched a Twitter attack on the congressman.
Cummings confirmed in a statement Friday that someone tried to gain entry into his home early Saturday morning.
"I was notified of the intrusion by my security system, and I scared the intruder away by yelling before the person gained entry into the residential portion of the house," he said. "I thank the Baltimore Police Department for their response and ask that all further inquiries be directed to them.”
The Baltimore Police Department said in a statement that Cummings’ home was broken into at about 3:40 a.m. Saturday and that it wasn’t clear whether any property had been taken.
Just hours later, on Saturday, Trump lashed out at Cummings and his Baltimore district on Twitter, calling the district "a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" and saying "no human being would want to live there."
Trump later tweeted that it was "So sad that Elijah Cummings has been able to do so little for the people of Baltimore.”
After top Democrats and others from Baltimore rebuked Trump's comments as "racist" and "disgraceful," Trump launched another round of attacks against Cummings on Sunday, calling him “racist,” before reviving his criticisms of Baltimore once again Tuesday.
