Pr*sident-Elect Donald Trump, displaying the pettiness we’ve come to expect from his early morning tweets, was at it again Saturday, this time attacking Congressman John Lewis, who said yesterday in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd that he doesn’t consider the man who will step into White House next week to be a legitimate president.
Riiiiiight. Of course, as Dave Weigel points out, Lewis represents a nice part of Atlanta.
The denigration of Lewis—who, in one of many confrontations with the upholders of segregation had his skull fractured by a police billy club 48 years ago in the fight for civil rights—is all the more pathetic considering that Trump spent years denigrating and raising questions about the origins of President Barack Obama. Feeding conspiracy theories and spreading lies is, as we have come to learn all too well, one of Trump’s defining characteristics.
The deep-fried racism of Trump, a large cohort of his followers, and the guy he’s picked to be attorney general is what John Lewis has spent his entire adult life fighting. Trump isn’t worthy of shining Lewis’s shoes. Not that the Congressman would let him.
As diarist Kelroy writes:
The truth is that while John Lewis, a hero, was risking his life for human dignity and what was just, Trump was excluding African Americans from his buildings and making money on the backs of the less fortunate. His disgraceful treatment of Congressman Lewis shows the truth of what the Congressman has stated. We need to follow his example and make sure everyone knows that Trump is illegitimate and not our president.