Trump’s favorite quotation from the Bible is Matthew (5:38-42) in the New Testament. All he takes from it is the phrase, “An eye for an eye.” Jesus repudiates even that notion. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. As usual, his reading is limited and his comprehension is next to nil.
Trump obviously thinks it is recommending an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. First, the complete passage speaks against such a simplistic concept. But, we have come to expect his comprehension to be limited to the simplistic. Second, the law that the text references is not Hebraic. It comes from Babylonia’s Code of Hammurabi.
Trump would be well-advised to read a couple of chapters further to Matthew 7:2: For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. With the Squad, John Lewis and Elijah Cummings, all of them of color, being accused of being from “infested” areas, it is only meet and proper that his own background be addressed.
Trump’s company has been cited over the years as a slumlord. Rat infestations have been commonly mentioned. He learned how to be one (a slumlord as well as a rat) at his father’s knee. In 1976 Daddy Fred was arrested in Baltimore for refusing to keep his 39 buildings in repair. This was while Little Donnie was president of the Trump Organization, because Daddy ha been charged by the Department of Justice with discrimination three years earlier.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is not just a small-time slumlord, he qualifies for his properties in New York and other cities, including Baltimore. In 2017 alone, Jared was cited for 200 violations in Baltimore.Then there is Mar-a-Lago with 78 health citations in just the past 3 years.
He called Elijah Cummings’ congressional district the worst in the nation. However, that is the district that prints and mails out those millions of Social Security checks, mine included. It also houses the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which pays all the bills for Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs. Also, therein resides one of my alma maters, Johns Hopkins University and the Hopkins Health Center, possibly the finest in the country, and the University of Maryland System.
While that district received $15.7 billion in government largess, the 4th district in Philadelphia received $27.4 billion. The district’s level of college-educated residents and home prices are above the national average. At $58,000, it has the 2nd highest median household income level of majority-black districts.
Not only is Baltimore a part of America, it is home to Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. That means Trump has even more responsibility for and power over Baltimore to rectify any problems than only one of 535 members of Congress.
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