House Oversight Committee char Elijah Cummings (D-MD) compared the racist chants at President Donald Trump’s rally about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to the backlash he got over 50 years ago when he tried to integrate a neighborhood pool.
During an interview on ABC News “This Week,” Cummings told show host George Stephanopoulos that the rally crowd’s “send her home” chants in response to Trump’s tirade about Omar brought up painful memories of how white Americans treated him during the civil rights movement.
In 1962, 12-year-old Cummings joined a campaign to integrate a nearby swimming pool, during which Cummings said he was beaten and had “all kinds of rocks and bottles thrown at me.”
“And the interesting thing is that I heard the same kind of chants,” the Democratic lawmaker said during his interview. “‘Go home. You don’t belong here.'”
“And George, I gotta tell you that I’m not the only person of color who’s had those kind of experiences,” Cummings added.
Cummings said that the chants and Trump’s racist rhetoric this week “brings up the same feelings I had over 50 some years ago.”
“And it’s very painful,” he said.
The day after the rally, Trump first claimed he “wasn’t happy” with the chanting (though he had let it continue for over ten seconds), then later praised the crowd “patriotic.”
Watch Cummings below:
Cummings: I heard the same "you don't belong here" chants when I was trying to integrate a pool over 50 years ago pic.twitter.com/qqTrVybjxT
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 21, 2019
