Donald Trump has dismissed the legacy of Rep. John Lewis following his death, saying the civil rights icon made a ‘big mistake’ not coming to his inauguration.
Trump made the comments as Lewis lay in state at the Capitol last Tuesday.
Asked about the late civil rights activist’s legacy Trump replied: ‘Nobody has done more for black Americans than I have.’
Longtime Congressman Lewis, whose bloody beating at Selma helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, died on July 17 and was laid to rest last Thursday.
Former president Barack Obama eulogized him at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also addressed mourners.
But Trump stayed away and instead refused to say whether he thought Lewis’ life was impressive in an interview with Axios
. He also did not visit the late Congressman’s body as he lay in state.
Asked how history will remember Rep. Lewis Trump replied: ‘I really don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. I never met John Lewis, actually, I don’t believe.’
Lewis did not attend Trump’s inauguration and had previously said he did not see the billionaire businessman as as a ‘legitimate president’ because of alleged Russian interference in the election.
When Trump later complained about immigrants from ‘s***hole countries,’ Lewis declared, ‘I think he is a racist… we have to try to stand up and speak up and not try to sweep it under the rug.’
Probed on if he thought Lewis’ life and story was impressive the president replied: ‘He didn’t come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches. And that’s OK. That’s his right. ‘
‘And, again, nobody has done more for black Americans than I have.’
‘He should have come. I think he made a big mistake.
‘I can’t say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive.’
In 1965, Lewis was beaten by Alabama state troopers in the city of Selma in what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday.’ He inspired others with calls to make ‘Good Trouble.’
Trump did say he would have ‘no objection to’ renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama where Lewis was beaten after the civil rights leader.
Speaking at his service Obama, who awarded Lewis the Medal of Freedom in 2011, said he owed a great debt to his ‘mentor’ and his forceful vision of freedom and that Lewis would be a ‘founding father of a fuller, better, fairer America’.
He said Lewis was an American whose faith had been tested ‘again and again to produce a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance’.
‘Americans like John… liberated all of us. America was built by people like them. America was built by the John Lewises,’ Obama said.
Both Bush and Clinton both spoke of Lewis’ humble beginnings on a farm in Troy, Alabama, to becoming a leader of the civil rights movement and ultimately the man known as the ‘conscience of Congress’.
Trump paid tribute to Lewis after returning from a spot of golf with Senator Lindsey Graham earlier in the day.
‘Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family,’ Trump tweeted.
His funeral followed a week of memorial services.
The coffin bearing his body was escorted across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Sunday, decades after his ‘Bloody Sunday’ beating there drew a national spotlight to the struggle for racial equality.
On Monday, his casket was taken to the US Capitol in Washington where it lay in state through Tuesday.