![]() There was no singing, no shouting-just the sound of scuffling feet. Testifying at Sessions’s confirmation hearing, Lewis said, “Those who are committed to equal justice in our society wonder whether Senator Sessions’s call for law and order will mean today what it meant in Alabama when I was coming up back then." Another reason is almost certainly Trump’s appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. At least one reason for his harsh judgment surely has to do with his level of outrage at the racist and misogynist tenor of the Trump campaign. The declassified version of the intelligence report lacks the kind of evidence that the American people and a firm conclusion require, but Lewis was not prepared to wait before delivering his opinion. Lewis, for his part, cited on “Meet the Press” what American intelligence agencies have described as a one-sided, pro-Trump attempt to meddle in the 2016 Presidential campaign-an information and cyber assault, the agencies concluded, that ranged from the production and distribution of phony stories discrediting Clinton to the hack of the Democratic National Committee. ![]() “Somebody said I’m the Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters,” he said in a speech in South Carolina, without identifying the “somebody.” If Trump doesn’t like someone or something that somebody says, well, “bing, bing, bing-I say something really bad about them.” Just like Abraham Lincoln. Meryl Streep is “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.” “Saturday Night Live” is “really bad television!” Hillary Clinton is “guilty as hell.” He refuses to school himself on policy, but it is a priority of state to sound off on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings on the revival of “The Apprentice.” Trump admires the concision of his own writing. Trump’s inability to restrain himself is on daily display. But when Lewis went on “Meet the Press” this weekend and challenged the legitimacy of Trump’s election, citing charges of Russian involvement in the campaign, Trump immediately reached for his phone. Trump chose to launch his political career as a bloviating booster of the racist conspiracy theory known as “birtherism,” declaring, in effect, that the Presidency of Barack Obama was illegitimate. He flatters Alex Jones, the leading crackpot conspiracy theorist of the airwaves, as a man of “amazing” reputation. He took his time before disavowing support from the likes of David Duke, a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Who would think to call John Lewis “all talk, talk, talk-no action or results”? Who would have the impoverished language to dismiss the whole of John Lewis as “sad”? As it happens, the President-elect of the United States.ĭonald Trump reveals his nature through the objects of his affection and the targets of his insults. ![]() Only a heedless few would reject that judgment out of hand, no matter how wounding. ![]() King and Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker long gone, Lewis remains nearly alone in his capacity to tell the story of that era as a direct witness and, because of all that he has seen and endured, to issue credible moral judgment. Lewis is a dismal institution’s griot, a historical actor and hero capable of telling the most complex and painful of American stories-the story of race. He is also the singular conscience of Capitol Hill. ![]() John Lewis represents Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, one vote of four hundred and thirty-five. ![]()
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