"You have a great opportunity with your debate tonight to talk to Bernie Sanders about what he said about Baltimore. Was he racist? He was on CNN on Sunday and nobody asked him about his comments about Baltimore being a Third World country," McDaniel said.

“Every four years like clockwork we hear, ‘Republicans are racist,’ but you know what, Democrats get continually elected. … and problems aren’t being solved,” @GOPChairwoman Ronna McDaniel on the reaction to Trump’s recent attacks on Dem congressmembers. https://t.co/9cBkihapb9 pic.twitter.com/SPsBUV5Td2 — New Day (@NewDay) July 30, 2019

Sanders will be on stage Tuesday evening for the first of two consecutive nights of Democratic debates.

Sanders made the "Third World" comments in 2015, when he was a presidential candidate. The remarks were in reference to a visit he made earlier in the year to the West Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray died while in police custody.

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"Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think you’re in a wealthy nation. You would think that you were in a Third World country," he said at the time.

President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE on Monday seized on Sanders's comments, arguing the Democratic presidential candidate should be labeled a racist for the remarks if people are going to criticize the president's own recent tweets about the city.

The president on Saturday and Sunday sent more than a dozen tweets about House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings Elijah Eugene CummingsBlack GOP candidate accuses Behar of wearing black face in heated interview Overnight Health Care: US won't join global coronavirus vaccine initiative | Federal panel lays out initial priorities for COVID-19 vaccine distribution | NIH panel: 'Insufficient data' to show treatment touted by Trump works House Oversight Democrats to subpoena AbbVie in drug pricing probe MORE (D-Md.) and the city of Baltimore, which includes Cummings's congressional district.

Trump described the country's 30th-largest city and surrounding areas as a "very dangerous & filthy place" where "no human being would want to live." He later called Cummings — the son of sharecroppers in South Carolina — a "racist."

The back-and-forth on CNN began after McDaniel argued that Trump's economic policies regarding the African American community have not received adequate media coverage. She pointed to historically low levels of unemployment and rising wages.