Attacking John Lewis: Where Untrue Meets Unintelligent
- Charlie Biscotto
- Jan 15, 2017
- 3 min read
On Friday, John Lewis made a bit of a splash by announcing that he would not attend Donald Trump's inauguration because he did not see Trump's election as "legitimate" in the aftermath of Russian hacking allegations. Republican Ben Sasse, a longstanding critic of Donald Trump and a man at the forefront of investigating those allegations, issued a heartfelt plea for Lewis to rethink his decision, tweeting:
But if you know Donald Trump, and unfortunately we do, you knew that this was not the last we'd see of the conflict on Twitter. The next morning., we got exactly what we expected- that rare mix of invective and objectively false information that only this president-elect could give:
Not only are these tweets factually inaccurate, but they're also bad politics. Let's start with why they're false.
John Lewis's district encompasses most of Atlanta and a good portion of its suburbs, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution's rundown on the district notes that the median income is above the Georgia average (though below the national average), has around a 90% rate of high school graduation (above average, particularly for the racial demographics), and is ranked 14th in the country for violent crime rate. Forbes Magazine rates Atlanta as the 9th-best place in the country for business and careers. Reporter Kurt Eichenwald implied what might be underpinning Donald Trump's notions of a Congressional district being run down despite all evidence to the contrary:
Trump's blatant stereotyping of Lewis's district based on Lewis's race and the consistency with which he conflates black people, inner cities, and crime is well-documented (see here, here, and here). Having the president-elect of the United States repeat those ugly stereotypes for his followers' consumption is one of the worst possible ways for him to reach the goal, stated by Steve Harvey after meeting with Trump this week, of coming together "to unify our country." How do we unify when the 37% of the people who still approve of our president-elect are being fed a steady diet of false stereotypes about a race that comprises another (I presume mostly non-overlapping) 13%?
Moreover, to say John Lewis is "all talk, talk, talk" would be laughable if it weren't so deadly serious. At age 25, John Lewis was nearly beaten to death by state troopers protesting for equal rights in Selma. Donald Trump at age 25, by contrast, was inheriting his daddy's business and fighting his own greatest battle, to avoid venereal disease.
Lewis's work alongside Martin Luther King Jr. was instrumental in bringing about the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively. He ran a federal volunteer agency under Jimmy Carter, served on Atlanta's City Council, and has been a member of Congress since 1987, serving with distinction in all posts and earning the respect of colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Which is why, amidst all of Trump's furor, Ben Sasse was happy to leap to his colleague's defense, following up his early exhortation for Lewis to reconsider his stance on the inauguration by tweeting:
This opens the next (and significantly less important) topic: beyond just being objectively wrong, Donald Trump's statement has made for bad politics. Where some people may have been worried by Lewis questioning Trump's legitimacy, Trump's counter-punch turned the narrative towards people across the ideological spectrum defending Lewis. Democrats who initially feared the optics of skipping the inauguration now have cover to do so in solidarity with Lewis. Democrats are using Trump's quotes to raise money. And John Lewis himself will see a nice financial windfall as his books fly off shelves and sell out on Amazon.
If Donald Trump really is trying to unite Americans as Steve Harvey says, he seems to have found a way to do it. It might not be quite what he had in mind, but with his favorability rating already the lowest ever recorded by Gallup for an incoming president, perhaps he asked his own favorite question: What do you have to lose?