WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — President Donald Trump told reporters Monday afternoon that he doesn't plan to visit the U.S. Capitol this week to pay tribute to long-time Georgia lawmaker and icon of the civil rights movement John Lewis.
The body of the late Rep. John Lewis will lie in state Monday and throughout the day Tuesday.
Trump publicly jousted with Lewis, who once called Trump an illegitimate president and chided him for stoking racial discord. The president countered by blasting Lewis’s Atlanta congressional district as “crime-infested.”
"No, I won't be going, no," Trump responded after a reporter asked whether he'd be paying respects to Lewis either Monday or Tuesday.
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to pay his respects later Monday.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who served in Congress alongside Lewis, is expected to visit the Capitol to pay his respects. The pair became friends over their two decades on Capitol Hill together and Biden’s two terms as vice president to Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president who awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.