The Patriot Post® · Lewis vs. Trump
No doubt you saw the headlines. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and President-elect Trump were trading sharp words. It all started late Friday when Lewis said, “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.”
As we have noted repeatedly, there is not one shred of evidence that the Russians hacked voting machines or changed vote totals.
Not surprisingly, Trump responded. He tweeted, “Congressman John 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.”
The left-wing news media pounced. Virtually every outlet ran headlines like this one from ABC: “Donald Trump Attacks Civil Rights Icon John Lewis.” They all ran pictures showing Lewis being beaten at the historic 1965 civil rights march in Selma.
Casual observers were left with the impression, quite deliberately, that Trump started the feud. The degree of distortion is breathtaking!
Lewis’ leadership in the civil rights movement is indeed praiseworthy. But it does not give him a free pass to engage in demagoguery in the political arena without any response.
I did a little research this weekend and was reminded that Rep. Lewis has a disturbing history in this regard. He has repeatedly smeared conservatives with unfounded accusations of racism his entire career.
Lewis compared John McCain and Sarah Palin to George Wallace. (By the way, Wallace was a Democrat.)
Lewis suggested that Mitt Romney was a closet segregationist.
It was John Lewis who smeared Tea Party activists in 2010, saying they used the “N word” at an anti-Obamacare rally.
Breitbart founder Andrew Breitbart offered to donate $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund if anyone could produce any evidence to corroborate Lewis’ charge. There were members of Congress, staff, reporters and activists there, yet no one could back up that slanderous charge.
I have no doubt that Vladimir Putin, first and foremost, wanted to discredit our constitutional republic by creating doubt about the results. But John Lewis is playing right into Putin’s hands. Both Putin and Lewis want a weak president who is unable to marshal political support behind him.
When Lewis makes absurd claims questioning Trump’s legitimacy, I’m sure glasses of vodka are being raised in his honor in the Kremlin.
In Case You Missed It
CIA chief John Brennan publicly attacked Donald Trump over the weekend, saying he took “great umbrage” with Trump’s reaction to repeated leaks about his intelligence briefings. I can’t recall the last time a CIA director was so clearly engaged in partisan politics.
Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward defended Trump against leaks from the intelligence community and the alleged Russian dossier. On Fox News Sunday, Woodward said:
“I’ve lived in this world for 45 years where you get things and people make allegations. That is a garbage document. It never should have been presented as part of an intelligence briefing… I think if you look at the real chronology and the nature of the battle here, those intelligence chiefs … made a mistake here. And when people make mistakes, they should apologize.”
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, historian John Steele Gordon suggests that Trump’s victory may signal the beginning of a new political order.
While Hillary won the popular vote, Gordon notes the following: “Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin of 2.9 million was built on an extremely narrow base… Subtract her margins in a mere five counties — the New York City boroughs, save Staten Island, and Los Angeles County — and she lost the popular vote in the remainder of the nation by more than 500,000.”