Trump’s comments on John Lewis were ‘almost blasphemous’, Atlanta Mayor Bottoms says
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms slammed President Donald Trump on Tuesday over his comments about late civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis.
Trump said during an interview with Axios that he couldn’t “say one way or the other” if Lewis was impressive.
“I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive,” Trump said in the interview that aired Monday. “He didn’t come — 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’ve come. I think he made a big mistake.”
Bottoms criticized Trump’s remarks in an interview with CNN.
“Donald Trump shows us time and time again that the only thing he believes in is himself,” she said. “He doesn’t care anything about the American people, he doesn’t care anything about the history of this country, he doesn’t care anything about the future of this country.”
When asked about Trump’s comment that he has “done more for Black Americans” than anyone else, Bottoms said: “He’s delusional. He’s a narcissist and he is delusional. He’s done nothing for African Americans in this country, and to speak that in the same sentence as John Lewis is almost blasphemous.”
Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia, died on July 17 after announcing that he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, The New York Times reported. Pictures of Lewis getting beaten during protests in Selma led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who challenged segregation by riding buses across the South. At the age of 23, Lewis also spoke at the 1963 March of Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Lewis didn’t attend Trump’s inauguration, telling NBC in January 2017 that he didn’t see Trump as a “legitimate president.”
“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” Lewis said.
Trump tweeted in response that Lewis should “spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results.”
Bottoms previously clashed with Trump when he arrived in Atlanta in July without wearing a face mask.
“So by not having on a mask, President Trump did violate law in the city of Atlanta, but I am somehow not surprised that he disregarded our rules and regulations in the city,” Bottoms told CNN.
The White House said that Trump had followed guidelines by the CDC, according to the publication.
