Trump assesses John Lewis’ legacy: ‘He didn’t come to my inauguration’

President Donald Trump played down the accomplishments of Rep. John Lewis, the recently deceased civil-rights icon, and mentioned Lewis not attending the Trump inauguration in an interview conducted while Lewis was lying in state at the Capitol.

The comments from Trump, which aired on “Axios on HBO” on Monday night, were unsurprising, given his penchant for grievance. But they were nonetheless stunning for the degree to which Trump refused to view Lewis’ life and legacy in terms beyond how it related to Trump himself.

“I never met John Lewis, actually,” Trump said. “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.”

When asked to reflect on Lewis’ contributions to the civil-rights movement, Trump instead talked up his own record.

“Again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have,” he said. “He should have come. I think he made a big mistake.”

Trump declined to say whether he found Lewis’ life story “impressive.” He seemed indifferent to renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, after the congressman. The bridge, named after a former Confederate general, Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan and senator, was the site of a turning point in the civil-rights movement. The incident became known as Bloody Sunday.

On that day, March 7, 1965, Lewis suffered a cracked skull during a march across the bridge when a state trooper clubbed him and beat him to the ground. Trump, in the Axios interview, suggested there “were many others also” whose work should be praised.