Rep. Elijah Cummings called President Trump’s attacks against him and the city he represents a distraction and defended Baltimore against Trump’s criticisms that it was a “rodent-infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

Cummings, a Democrat and the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told the hundreds of reporters gathered at the National Press Club on Tuesday that Trump’s “blatant attempts to attack my community in Baltimore” were meant to “divide us as a country.” Trump’s criticisms were intended to “distract us from all that unites us,” he said, and leave the nation less able to “combat the dangers our country faces.”