Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland turned down an invitation Wednesday to tour a federal housing facility in Baltimore with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who was extending an olive branch to the lawmaker locked in a feud with President Trump.
Mr. Carson said he didn’t know why Mr. Cummings skipped the event, saying perhaps it was because of a scheduling conflict.
The HUD secretary said Mr. Trump is willing to work with Mr. Cummings to help improve living conditions in Baltimore. Meeting with reporters in the city where he attended medical school, Mr. Carson said the president’s feud with Mr. Cummings can be set aside for the good of Baltimore residents.
“I’ve talked to the president over the last couple of days about what can we do for Baltimore,” Mr. Carson told reporters. “He’s very willing to work with people here in Baltimore, including with Elijah Cummings. But you know, the president’s emphasis is on the people. And that certainly is my emphasis.”
But it’s not clear whether Democrats are willing to work with the president. In addition to Mr. Cummings skipping the event, the church where HUD had planned to hold the event, Morning Star Baptist Church of Christ, booted Mr. Carson and the news media off its property, saying it hadn’t given permission.
“When we’re talking about helping people — this is the level we have sunken to in society,” Mr. Carson said of the church.
Mr. Trump has traded accusations of racism with Mr. Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, calling the city a “rat and rodent infested mess.” The president has accused Mr. Cummings and other city leaders of squandering billions in federal aid that were intended to help city residents.
Mr. Carson said the city has problems, “and we can’t sweep them under the rug.”
“There are good things in Baltimore, they are bad things in Baltimore,” he said. “But it’s so important to be able to deal with these issues, that we are willing to talk about them. And that we’re willing to work together. You know, we just have all this animosity all the time.”
He cited the administration’s expansion of opportunity zones to encourage long-term investment in distressed communities, and its prison reform agenda that is giving former inmates a second chance.
Mr. Carson, who is trained as a pediatric neurosurgeon, said after operating on children he sometimes was reluctant to send them back to their homes.
“I spent a lot of time trying to give the children here in Baltimore a second chance at life, operating for hours and hours,” he said. “Days later, [there was] a dilemma about sending those kids back into some of the neighborhoods that I knew that they came from in East Baltimore and West Baltimore, where there were rats and roaches and mice and ticks, where there was just unabated lead problems that were having devastating effects on the mental development of young people, where there was mold. We had large numbers of people with asthma because of the mold and some of the environmental issues. So, you know, that was a problem for me, and it stayed on my mind a lot.
“I guess it’s the way God works — I end up as the secretary of HUD. And we can actually deal with these issues.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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