CNN anchor Victor Blackwell choked up on air Saturday while addressing President Donald Trump’s criticism of Rep. Elijah Cummings and the city of Baltimore.
The emotional moment happened when Blackwell, who is from Baltimore, read a story about Trump slamming Cummings — his frequent critic — and the lawmaker’s district which includes parts of Baltimore. Trump referred to the city as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and claimed it is “far worse and more dangerous” than conditions on the U.S. border with Mexico.
Related Story: Baltimore TV Anchor Ousted After Question About City’s Former Black Mayors
Blackwell noted other instances in which the president has attacked people of color using the term “infestation.”
“Donald Trump has tweeted more than 43,000 times. He’s insulted thousands of people, many different types of people. But when he tweets about infestation, it’s about black and brown people,” Blackwell said.
“The president says about Congressman Cummings’ district that no human would want to live there,” he added as tears welled up in his eyes. “You know who did, Mr. President? I did, from the day I was brought home from the hospital to the day I left for college, and a lot of people I care about still do.”
[Watch the video below]
Blackwell continued: “There are challenges, no doubt. But people are proud of their community. I don’t want to sound self-righteous, but people get up and go to work there, they care for their families there, they love their children who pledge allegiance to the flag just like people who live in districts of Congress who support you, sir. They are Americans, too.”
The Wire creator David Simon also took issue with Trump’s comments.
“If this empty-suit, race-hating fraud had to actually visit West Baltimore for five minutes and meet any of the American citizens who endure there, he’d wet himself,” Simon tweeted Saturday.
Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, documented the city’s crime, corruption and troubled school system over five seasons of HBO’s The Wire.
The Emmy-winning writer continued to tweet about Trump’s attack throughout the day.
“The president is ‘literally’ a simplistic, racist moron. I am ‘literally’ the guy writing stuff about the last century of U.S. policy, about the drug war and mass incarceration, about Brown v. and white flight, about all of modern U.S. history to which your kind stays mute,” he replied to someone who described Baltimore as a “sh–hole.”
A 2018 USA Today story cited FBI statistics listing Baltimore as having a homicide rate well above any other American city with a population over 500,000 people.
“Maryland’s biggest city yielded a punishing homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people,” the story said.
At the time, the FBI said the national violent crime rate had decreased by 0.2 percent since 2016, making Baltimore’s rising crime stand out.
wonder if he was as emotional when his fellow Blacks were playing the Knockout game on unsuspecting whites in Baltimore… Or the recent Black mob attacking whites at the Inner harbour, wonder if he teared up for the victims??
What about when the former female black mayor of Baltimore complained on a hot mike about the stench of dead rats and the like while a local news reporter was giving a report on the tour of West Baltimore on live tv. Was that racist?
What about when Bernie complained about the third-world state of Baltimore? Was that racist?
No. That’s just Progressive Privilege.
According to the liberal Baltimore Sun in 2016, a PBS film report aired in 2018, residents of Congressman Cummings district and a recently surfaced video of the then mayor the of Baltimore, Trumps comments accurately portray the situation in thus district. Faux emotion from Victor Blackwell to draw attention to himself and away from the truth.