Making misogynist and racist comments to shift media attention away from their corruption and incompetence is a common tactic. In 2019, Trump called the late representative Elijah Cummings’s (D-MD) majority-Black congressional district “a disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess” to turn attention away from Cummings’s investigation (as chair of the House Oversight Committee) of daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s use of private email accounts for state business.
