Trump again attacking a minority member of congress. And an entire community. This time its congressman Elijah Cummings and the city of baltimore and so far its been mostly crickets from his fellow republicans. Cummings, of course, the chair of the Oversight Committee investigating the administration, he was the target of an onslaught, at least 19 tweets by the president over the weekend and into this morning. His defenders struggling to answer for him. Plus, look at what he said and why he did it. Congressman cummings has sat there and attacked our Border Patrol agents. All right. This reminds me of what happened to soldiers coming back from vietnam. That justifies a racial resentment tweet in response. Is that president ial leadership . Well, look, i didnt do the tweets, chuck. I didnt do the tweets. Critics didnt hold back labeling the tweets racist, including the president s description of cummings district as a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. The congressman fired back, it is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the executive branch but it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents. And the baltimore suns editorial is scathing, particularly the closing paragraph. We would tell the most dishonest man ever to occupy the oval office the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of womens private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin, and the guy who insisted there are good people among murderous neonazis that hes not fueling most americans that hes slightly competent to hold his post or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have vermin in your neighborhood than to be one. Kelly atkins, an msnbc contributor is here. And ashley parker, an msnbc senior political analyst. Jere jere jeremy peters, New York Times reporter. And the communications director. We have nbcs rajema ellis. And steve kornacki. Lots of great folks. Lots to get to. Matt, since were talking about communications, if communications is about delivering your message in a forceful, compelling way, well the sun did it, didnt they . They certainly did. I know you mentioned republicans coming out about this. I saw will hurd yesterday, the only africanamerican republican member in the house yesterday and he, i think, was very critical of the president with his tweets against ilhan omar. He drew a little different line this time. He didnt view it as much of a racial overtone as the previous tweets. I think a couple reasons also the house when you talk about a black neighborhood, not just being rat and rodent infested but also humans wouldnt live there. Yeah. Look, im just, again, i respect his opinion. Im telling you what he said yesterday in the sunday show. Sure. As more republicans come back, especially in the senate, from the weekend break you might hear more of this. The house is in recess so i think that might contribute a little bit to this. But also the republicans i talked to are not very eager to inject themselves. Because . Into a third week of trump tweets. Again, especially when theyre on recess. And, look, i think its important to now, just to look, i appreciate that. But what does being on recess have to do with standing up against racist attacks . Well, again, as i said, theyre not going to be in congress, folks like ashley or jeremy arent going to be walking the halls to force them to answer on this. They have to be proactive on it. The senate, more folks will come out as they come back to washington and reporters again find them in the hallways and press them on it. But again that will probably be the case, less so for the house. Ashley, we saw republican senator rick scott struggling to defend the president on meet the press. Once again, seems to be a Pretty Simple callation fculation for republicans. Are they endorsing this, though, by their silence . Well, as matt was saying republicans feel like theyre in a very tricky position and to be clear theres not many profiles in courage here but if you get them privately they will sometimes say they are uncomfortable with his language and tweets and would prefer he doesnt do it. But they are very loathe to publicly criticize the president , even with something, a tweet that was perhaps very clearly a racist tweet that was even more stark, maybe, about the squad a week or two ago, even then there were only four or five republican members who really came out and said anything sharp about the president. And that is just a reality of where the party is right now. They in some ways theyre a lot like some voters in the republican party. They dont like what the president says. They dont like the way he says it. They dont like his tweets. For better or worse they understand that he is their guy and they are loathe to get crosswise with him, which does create this problem, which as you said theyre not really coming up coming out and standing up against racist tweets, racist language or a racially tinged, racially charged language depending on the instance. Kimberly, are we saying political payback for congressman cummings investigations into the president , or is this more of an extension of 2016, he wants to go back to that playbook . Whats happening here . I think its all of the above. Its definitely politically motivated because of chairman cummings work in investigating President Trump and his administration. And it is definitely the playbook. We saw the way that the president spoke about chicago, for example, in a very loud dog whistle. He claimed to be appealing to africanamericans but of course it was the exact opposite. And its an extension of these attacks that began well, not began, but that included the attacks on the four Congress People of color and whats happening with republicans, republicans are loathe to criticize this president publicly for another for a number of reasons. They dont want to be attacked by him. They dont want to offend members of his base that they feel that they need politically. But in this case the tweet about chairman cummings, we are seeing, as ashley pointed out, some republicans are saying differentiating this one. But this tweet is just an example of the more covert kind of racist message that youve seen more in the past that gives some republicans the ability to retro fit a rationale on it to give them some sort of plausible deniability that its about policy or saying that baltimore does have all these problems while at the same time not having to address the racism issue. Its been very difficult for any republican to stand up firmly and say this is not the way that we that we speak to people and about people and about americans. Theyre really afraid to do that even though they are not here in congress. We dont were not chasing them down so this would be the perfect time for them to be able to do that. Well, also members of his administration, who normally are on the sunday shows, case in point, not just rick scott, but mick mulvaney, the acting white house chief of staff, heres what he said. I think its right for the president to raise the issue of look, i was in congress for six years. If i had poverty in my district like baltimore or crime like chicago or homelessness like san francisco, and i spent all of my time in washington, d. C. Chasing down this mueller investigation, this bizarre impeachment crusade id get fired. And i think the president is right to raise that and it has absolutely zero to do with race. Jeremy what hes trying to say is that democrats are focusing on scandal instead of hope helping residents in their districts. What . What mulvaney is doing there, chris, is articulating the more strategic big picture argument republicans have been trying to make for really years now about democratic governance. And this point that trump is making about cummings district is, by no means, novel or new. What they have been doing, if you watch fox news, if you listen to talk radio, the right has been trying to portray cities like los angeles, san francisco, seattle as drug infested, as decaying, as bordering on anarchy, with just homelessness problems and feces in the street. So its an argument theyre trying to make about democrats inability to lead. Its also tied to what President Trump did at the very end of his 2016 campaign when he went to detroit and he said to black voters what the hell do you have to lose . And that was meant really to suppress the black vote. I mean, it was they will say that they were trying to win over africanamericans but really what it was meant to do is to say democrats havent helped you if you live in a city like baltimore or detroit. What theyve done after ruling your cities for decades is left you pretty much in the state that you started out in, no quality of Life Improvement whatsoever. And that did have some effect in suppressing the vote in places like detroit and milwaukee, certainly. So i think this is part of a Bigger Picture argument the president of course as he is known to do tends to make those arguments in a much cruder fashion on twitter, and thats the situation that weve seen unfolding over the last few days here. So, steve, black voters in the democratic primaries are expected to account for what, one out of every four votes. Lets look at the history, and look at this as a political calculation. Yeah, i guess two pieces of this here, just in terms of the black vote in the democratic primaries what youre seeing here is this is the share in recent president ial primaries, the share of the overall primary vote that black voters accounted for. It was an alltime high of 2016, 24 , expecting it to be at least that high in 2020. So one out of four votes cast in democratic primaries we expect to be from black voters. Its a new project weve put online at nbc news, weve looked at the exit polling for every individual state, democratic president ial primary since the dawn of exit polling, taking you back to the late 1970s. One thing that jumps out is since 1992 no one has won the democratic nomination for president. Look at all these names here, none of the nominees have done it without also winning the black vote, generally overwhelmingly so its a very important constituency on the democratic side and also just in terms of that turnout question youre raising that jeremy was just speaking to there in the general election what you see here is the past four general elections this is the black turnout in the november election. And what you see is a spike here in 2008, in 2012, black turnout reached about twothirds. Barack obama on the ballot in both those races, won both of those races and then 2004, 2016, races that democrats narrowly lost and look at the difference. From about 66, 67 turnout, down to 60 turnout and again narrow democratic loss in 16. Narrow democratic loss in 04. Higher black turnout in 08 and 12. Democratic victories in those years. Interesting pattern. Kimberly, the big question becomes could this backfire on the president . Could it actually serve to increase black voter turnout . Obviously very helpful to the democrat, whoever he or she may be. I think it depends on who the democratic nominee and what the democratic nominee does. As i said this is a message that donald trump did have during his 2016 campaign. And we did see that drop in black voter turnout. Its up to the Democratic Party and the democratic nominee to really galvanize and encourage voters to come out, give them a reason to vote, other than, you know, to vote out donald trump. That message was not enough. The last time around. And they have to do better this time. Meantime, ashley, you wrote about soninlaw Jared Kushners major role in the president s reelection campaign, its focused on appealing to inner city voters, at the same time as your paper pointed out his family has a pretty nasty history of being frankly slum lords in that city of having many thousands of apartments with hundreds of violations, including rat infestation. Right . Thats right. And not just jareds Family History there, but we did a profile on jared because we wanted to kind of explain his outsized role which we didnt think people realized behind the scenes in the 2020 campaign, which is that almost everything flows through him. One of the details as you pointed out is that he had asked someone to bring him a ten point plan for winning inner cities. And then as we wrote his family has a pretty bad history of their control of their buildings in baltimore. But our profile ironically was posted on the same day the president began that cascade of tweets against chairman cummings. And one thing we made clear in our story is, look, jared has a lot of supporters but he has a lot of detractors who say for instance the idea that republicans can win inner cities in ten years is naive. Those are the things they pointed to as classic examples. Its fine for jared to order up a plan. How can he possibly believe this is a good use of anyones time when his fatherinlaw is tweeting what hes tweeting. It looks like it is going to become a campaign run on racial animous and on top of that his familys history is not exactly spotless. Is there no irony that we see here, matt, of the president s attacks given the history . Of the involvement in housing and, in fact, what one activist there said creating a race to the bottom in terms of poorly maintained properties. Yeah, to be clear, i dont care where you live. I dont think anybody should be living in rat infested, mice infested, anything housing. We can all agree on that, yeah. I think we can all agree on that. And when it comes to a ten year plan regardless of win or lose the Trump Campaign will not be running in ten years. And, look, i think right now this 2020 election is going to be extremely tight. Its going to focus on most likely the midwest, White Working Class voters, maybe some suburbs in arizona and georgia. I think thats where the Trump Campaign folks should be focusing on. These longterm plans are fantastic. We would love to win inner city voters. Reagan and bush did it in the late 80s and early 1990s. Right now weve got to focus on 2020. Jeremy, i want to play something that National ActionNetwork Founder and msnbc host reverend al sharpton had to say, by the way obviously the target of president ial tweets. He just said this last hour in baltimore. I know donald trump. Hes not mature enough to take criticism. He cant help it. Hes like a child. Somebody say something, he reacts. Hes thin skinned, and not really matured that well. But he has a particular venom for blacks and people of color. You spoke to reverend al yesterday, jeremy, pretty extensively about this big picture topic. What else did he tell you . It shows you, i think my conversation with al sharpton really kind of drove home how politically opportunistic this is for donald trump. Al sharpton fielded a call from President Trump shortly after his election, of president elect trump saying thank you to sharpton for something that sharpton had said about trumps political astuteness and the way that he was able to figure out how to appeal to certain voters to get elected. And sure enough his phone rings and its trump saying thank you so much reverend al. So this idea that now all the sudden trump thinks that he hates whites, i think whats really going on there is that al sharpton, of course, has been the rights boogie man for two, three decades now. As far in the past as some of his episodes are, they still get attention in right wing media like they happened yesterday. Its pretty amazing. And one other thing i think is worth noting out, worth pointing out with regard to representative cummings is that there is a really interesting piece in the atlantic by Peter Nicholas who talks about the relationship that cummings and trump formed early on in trumps presidency. That, to me, doesnt sound like a man, a president who thinks that i lee Elijah Cummings is at or is this terrible public servant, i think its really political opportunistic. Opportunistic and maybe we have seen in the past how the president turns on people who he once liked. So jeremy peters, kimberly atkins, matt gorman, steve kornacki, much appreciated. Police are still trying to figure out if a second suspect was involved in last nights mass shooting at a california food festival, four people are dead, including a gunman. Well go live to the scene where investigators are trying to piece together what happened there. A National Security shakeup, National Intelligence director dan coats out as President Trump prepares to nominate one of his most ardent defenders in congress to replace him. How the stage is set for a nasty confirmation battle. And you should be mad at simple things that are unnecessarily complicated. 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