President Donald J. Trump told reporters he will not make time in his schedule today to pay respects to the late Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, whose body is lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
"I won't be going."
Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House that he would not go to pay respects to Congressman John Lewis as he lies in state at the Capitol pic.twitter.com/dkcOOvHvsY
— Bloomberg Originals (@bbgoriginals) July 27, 2020
“I won’t be going,” said Trump according to Bloomberg QuickTake, with a clip of Trump addressing reporters on his way to Joint Base Andrews, from which he’ll fly to take a tour of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Trump managed, however, to tweet or retweet 43 different things this morning.
Trump’s public schedule this morning included just one event: greeting the Walking Marine, Terry Sharpe, a 69-year-old former Marine who walked 300 miles from Summerfield, North Carolina to Washington, DC to focus attention on veteran suicides.
Trump was roundly criticised for his ignorance of John Lewis’s death, which happened late on Friday, July 17. Trump did not even acknowledge Lewis’s passing for 15 hours, when he tweeted condolences to “he and his family”… after playing a round of golf at his Virginia country club.