Don touts museum at boycotted visit
President Trump stuck to his script Saturday at the opening of a new civil rights museum in Jackson, Miss., praising the African-American leaders of the movement and recounting their struggle.
The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum “records the oppression, cruelty and injustice inflicted on the African-American community, and the fight to end slavery, to break down Jim Crow, to end segregation, to gain the right to vote and to achieve the sacred birthright of equality,” said Trump.
“That’s big stuff, that’s big stuff,” the president added. “Those are very big phrases, very big words.”
Trump spoke with the widow and brother of assassinated icon Medgar Evers, and made special mention of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as “a man I’ve studied and watched and admired for my entire life.”
He did not name civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who announced Thursday that he would boycott the museum opening to protest Trump’s attendance.
Ahead of his speech, Trump took a 40-minute private tour of the museum that focused on an exhibit about the Freedom Riders and a display devoted to Evers’ life and work.
Trump’s remarks lasted just nine minutes, and were delivered to a small invited crowd of museum benefactors and civil-rights veterans. The president left the museum before the start of the building’s official public opening ceremonies.
Critics, including Lewis and NAACP president Derrick Johnson, had blasted Trump’s decision to attend the museum’s debut.
“President Trump’s statements and policies regarding the protection and enforcement of civil rights have been abysmal, and his attendance is an affront to the veterans of the civil rights movement,” Johnson said Tuesday.
Mississippi officials revamped the day’s schedule to smooth their ruffled feathers — dividing the president’s visit, and his indoor speech, from an outdoor public program.
Meanwhile, the contentious special election in Alabama to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ former Senate seat hit its final campaign weekend.
Trump tweeted support of Republican Roy Moore on Saturday.
“We can’t have a Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Democrat, Jones, in that important Alabama Senate seat,” Trump tweeted at 7:52 a.m. “Need your vote to Make America Great Again! Jones will always vote against what we must do for our Country.”
The race between Moore, a former state judge, and his Democrat opponent, Doug Jones, has tightened since nine women accused Moore of sexual harassment and other misconduct when they were teenagers.