Trump’s Sudden Photo-Op Just Happened To Be During Obama's John Lewis Eulogy
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump had his public schedule clear through mid-afternoon Thursday — right up until his predecessor Barack Obama was about to take the dais at civil rights leader John Lewis’ funeral 600 miles to the southwest — when suddenly, reporters and cameras were called into the Oval Office.
As Obama remembered the Georgia congressman who died last week, Trump spoke to the family of murder victim Vanessa Guillen, promising he would take action.
The White House denied there was any attempt to “counter-program” Obama’s widely anticipated remarks by creating a competing news event. “This meeting has been scheduled for weeks,” spokesman Judd Deere said. “That’s a disgusting question, by the way.”
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One White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Guillen’s family asked for the press to be invited in. It’s believed that a colleague killed Guillen, a Fort Hood, Texas, soldier, and later committed suicide.
Trump’s move, in any event, adds to a long pattern for a man who rose to prominence in the Republican Party based on his willingness to push a racist conspiracy theory that the first Black president was not born in the United States and was therefore elected illegitimately.
From the day he took office, Trump has also shown irritation at comparisons to his predecessor. In a speech in front of a wall memorialising CIA officers killed in the line of duty, Trump lied that his inaugural crowd had been larger than Obama’s. He has repeatedly, and...
