President Donald Trump reportedly stopped short of describing the late Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia as an impressive individual, and instead, boasted about his own credentials as it relates the African-American community, during an Axios interviewed that aired on Monday.
Members of the military arrive with the casket of late Rep. John Lewis of Georgia for a memorial service at the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, July 27, 2020. Michael A. McCoy/Reuters
Daily Times gathered that when asked by Axios reporter, Jonathan Swan, about how history would remember Lewis, Trump replied: “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“He chose not to come to my inauguration” Trump said. “He chose, I never met John Lewis, I don’t believe.”
Lewis, the longtime lawmaker from Georgia and civil rights leader, died at 80 in July, seven months after he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. Lewis’s accomplishments for the civil rights movement, which include marches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were widely praised by both Republicans and Democrats.
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Following Swan’s initial question, the reporter pressed Trump for a clearer answer: “Do you find him impressive?”
Trump replied that he could not “say one way or the other if Lewis was impressive, adding that the Democrat did not come to his inauguration.
“I find a lot of people impressive”, Trump said. “I find many people not impressive, but no, he didn’t come to my inauguration.
“He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches, and that’s ok,Trump added. “That’s his right. And again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have. He should’ve come. I think he made a big mistake.”
Lewis was one of dozens of Democratic lawmakers who refused to attend Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Lewis also declined to attend President George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001. Bush delivered remarks at Lewis’s funeral
“You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong,Lewis said to NBC News in 2017.
Trump did later acknowledge that Lewis “was a person that devoted a lot of energy and a lot of heart to civil rightsbut added, “there were many others, also.”
President Trump did not attend Lewis’ memorial service, nor did he pay respects to the late lawmaker, who laid in state in the Capitol rotunda. Lewis’s memorial ceremony included eulogies by Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
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