Martin Luther King III, After Meeting with Donald Trump: ‘We’ve Got to Move Forward’
Martin Luther King III met on Monday with president-elect Donald Trump and tried to cool tensions over the weekend trading of insults between Trump and Rep. John Lewis, the civil-rights leader who marched and fought alongside King’s late father, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Things get said on both sides in the heat of emotion,” said King on the national holiday celebrating his slain father and the civil rights movement he led. “At some point, this nation— we’ve got to move forward. People are literally probably dying. We need to be talking about how do we feed people? How do we clothe people? How do we create the best education system? That’s what we need to be focused on.”
King spoke to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower after meeting privately with Trump. The president-elect escorted King to the lobby after their meeting but returned to the elevator without saying a word to the journalists calling out questions to him.
The meeting comes after Trump was widely criticized over the weekend for insulting Lewis on Twitter, calling the Georgia Democrat “All talk, talk, talk—no action or results.”
Trump’s tweets were in response to Lewis telling NBC News that he was boycotting Trump’s inauguration and does not view the Republican reality-TV star as a “legitimate president.”
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Comedian Rob Schneider, meanwhile, also poked Lewis with a tweet on Monday that suggested Lewis’ “illegitimate” comment was unbecoming of Dr. King’s example. “Rep. Lewis. You are a great person. But Dr. King didn’t give in to his anger or his hurt. That is how he accomplished & won Civil Rights.”
Rep. Lewis. You are a great person. But Dr. King didn't give in to his anger or his hurt. That is how he accomplished & won Civil Rights.
— Rob Schneider (@RobSchneider) January 16, 2017
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“Rep. Lewis. You are a great person,” Schneider wrote. “But Dr. King didn’t give in to his anger or his hurt. That is how he accomplished & won Civil Rights.”
Lewis is a former “freedom rider” who marched with Dr. King during the peaceful 1965 voting rights protest on Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama —where he was beaten by a state trooper who fractured his skull, as depicted in the 2014 Oscar-nominated film Selma.
Asked by a reporter on Monday if Trump’s attack on Lewis as “all talk” didn’t “cut to your core,” King mostly avoided the bait, responding in a measured tone: “John Lewis has demonstrated that he’s action.”
“In the heat of emotion, a lot of things get said on both sides. At some point, I am—as John Lewis and many others are—a bridge builder,” King added. “…What I’m trying to do is always bring people together.”
