By Ian Swanson
TheHill
July 28, 2019
Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney defended President Trump’s remarks calling a black congressman’s district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” stating during an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace that there was nothing racist about the president’s comments.
Mulvaney, who has also served as Trump’s budget director, told Wallace that Trump was right to raise the issue and that “it has absolutely zero to do with race.”
Under pointed questioning from Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” Mulvaney said Trump criticized Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) because Cummings had criticized the border and said he would have done the same thing if the criticism had come from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a white congressman who is Jewish.