This Fox & Friends Segment that Preceded Trump’s Rant at Cummings Showed Piles of Trash in Baltimore

On Fox & Friends early on Saturday, a segment aired about Rep. Elijah Cummings and areas of Baltimore in his district. It included video from urban streets with piles of trash and showed appeals to the congressman to clean it up. Fifteen minutes later, Trump sent his already-infamous Tweet thread.

In fact, one line in particular, which prompted an emotional moment from CNN anchor and former Baltimore resident Victor Blackwell, appears to have been taken, and mangled, in part from the portion of the segment that featured Cummings’ own words.

Fox host Jedediah Bila began the segment after a few clips of Rep. Cummings at a hearing expressing outrage over conditions faced by migrants. “None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings,” said Cummings in one clip.

In Trump’s Tweets, he said of Baltimore that “no human would want to live there.”

“Hmm, well Democrats like Elijah Cummings say they care about how migrants are being treated at the border, but what about the families and people in their own District?” said Bila. “Congressman Cummings was elected to represent west Baltimore, but living conditions at the border are better than most areas in his district; the city lined with abandoned buildings and trash on the streets.”

Bila then introduced her guest, Republican strategist Kimberly Klacik, who filmed within Cummings district and interviewed residents.

“You know there is a crisis at the border, but there’s also a crisis in Baltimore, and I don’t think many people realize this but Congressman Cummings represents the most dangerous district in America,” said Klacik, as scenes from her video showed on-screen featuring trash on the streets, dilapidated or falling-apart buildings, and other decline and poor conditions.

“I went into the district to basically ask people if they were scared of Trump–Congressman Cummings said on a talk show last Sunday i believe that his constituents were afraid of Trump,” she said. “And as I go in and I start talking to people and I realized just what the living conditions are for, not just the residents but even the children living there, and what they’ve been playing around.”

“There’s abandoned row homes filled with trash, homeless addicts, empty needles that they have used. And it’s really right next door, so it’s attracting rodents, cockroaches, you name it,” Klacik continued. “But you know to have Congressman Cummings talk about the situation at the border, it’s laughable, because the conditions in his own district, and a lot of people said he hasn’t even been there in a while, are atrocious.”

All of these points showed up in Trump’s tweet thread, from the trash to the rodents and right down to alleged absenteeism on the part of Cummings. The entire premise, that the border’s conditions are more tolerable than those in Cummings’ district, was the central point of the segment, and explicitly stated by both host and guest.

It is not even remotely close to the first time a controversial Trump tweet thread has been traced to a Fox & Friends segment.

As this segment continued, Klacik said again that it’s a “deadly” district, and that it’s “ridiculous” to say people there are afraid of Trump. She even implied some support for the president

“To say that they’re afraid of Trump is just ridiculous, but I did find out that there are many people that are actually on board with Trump’s immigration policies,” she said. “So I don’t know he was talking to in his district but it wasn’t people I was talking to.”

Bila then introduced some compelling video of one local resident appealing to elected representatives, saying “help us, because we’re helping y’all.”

Bila and Klacik then returned to the topic of Cummings culpability, with Klacik saying “why he doesn’t go into his district and take a look at the conditions, I really don’t know.”

“As you can see, they’re pleading for help,” she said. “Baltimore, you know, it’s gotten worse under his watch.”

The segment aired at around 6:17 a.m. ET on Saturday. Trump tweeted at 7:14 a.m. Since that time. Rep. Cummings has responded on Twitter.

Watch the clip above, courtesy of FOX News Channel.

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