The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board did not take President Trump’s insults against the city lying down on Saturday — they hit back and they hit back hard hours after he claimed the city was “filthy” and “rodent infested.” In an editorial published late Saturday, the message to the president from one of the country’s oldest newspapers was clear right in the headline: “Better to have a few rats than to be one.” “It’s not hard to see what’s going on” in Trump’s attacks on Baltimore and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, the editors wrote. “The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream,” they wrote.

The editorial board accused the president of deploying the “most emotional and bigoted of arguments” to target “an African American lawmaker from a majority black district.” “It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like ‘you people’ or ‘welfare queens’ or ‘crime-ridden ghettos’ or a suggestion that the congressman ‘go back’ to where he came from,” they wrote. While the editors said they “would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner,” they offered a message to “the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are ‘good people’ among murderous neo-Nazis.” He is “still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post,” they said.