(CNN) Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings said he would welcome a visit from President Donald Trump to Baltimore in his first on-air comments addressing Trump's attacks on his district's largest city.

"The President is welcome in our district, to go through the 7th Congressional District, and he will see strong people who get up and they go out to work on the early bus," Cummings, the chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee, said Saturday following an event opening for an outdoor play space in Baltimore.

"He'll see people, he'll see organizations that have come to the inner city of Baltimore like neighborhoods like this and ... did not go around criticizing, but they said, 'How can we help?' And they have helped," Cummings continued, adding, "I welcome the President. I would love to see him."

Trump last week slammed the prominent African American lawmaker's district as a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess," suggesting that "no human being would want to live there." Trump's tirade -- which also criticized Cummings' work in Baltimore -- was his latest verbal assault against a minority member of Congress who is a frequent critic of the President. The tweets had followed a segment that aired an hour earlier on Fox News, in which a Republican strategist claimed conditions in Cummings' district were worse than those at the southern border.

"If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place," Trump tweeted of Cummings at the time.

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