During a Tuesday morning press conference, President Donald Trump not only defended his attack on Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (who chairs the House Oversight Committee) and the city of Baltimore — he also made some misleading statements on tariffs and the Washington Post. And it didn’t take CNN reporters Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow long to fact-check Trump’s bizarre claims.
Sciutto explained why Trump’s statements about U.S. tariffs on China are misleading, telling Harlow, “He said that China is paying, that the U.S. is getting billions and billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Of course, the fact is that U.S. importers and consumers pay for tariffs.”
Sciutto went on to say Trump’s claim that Baltimore’s city government, with Cummings’ help, has “wasted billions of dollars” has no basis in fact. Trump, Sciutto noted, made “quite a charge against Rep. Elijah Cummings, saying that Baltimore has taken — stolen, he seems to be saying, or wasted billions of dollar.”
View the complete July 30 article by Alex Henderson from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.