On Monday’s Good Morning America, ABC used the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to lecture Trump on his need to improve his “long and fractured” relationship with the black community. It began when Democratic Congressman John Lewis called Trump’s election win “illegitimate” last week and said he would not be attending the inauguration. When Trump fired back on Twitter, the media blew a fuse at Trump for daring to criticize the “civil rights icon.”
ABC tried to tie the fight with Lewis to Trump attacking civil rights in two reports. The first report from Tom Llamas was introduced by anchor Amy Robach who explained:
AMY ROBACH: Trump has another battle brewing on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day. President-elect Trump in that war of words with civil rights leader John Lewis. ABC's Tom Llamas is here with those details.
In his report, Llamas reiterated Robach’s point again, that Trump was fighting with a civil rights icon “on Martin Luther King day.”
LLAMAS: Amy Good morning to you. So the President-elect was scheduled to visit the Smithsonian museum of African-American History and Culture but he's no longer going to D.C. And the decision coming amid a public battle with one of the most respected African-American leaders in Congress. On this Martin Luther King day, President-elect Trump in the middle of an ugly fight with a civil rights icon over these comments.
Llamas ended his report by “fact-checking” Trump’s tweet about Lewis’s “failing district” and touting how many Congressman (not “Democrats”) were boycotting the inauguration.
LLAMAS: Now, Politifact rate's Trump's description of his district of Lewis’s district failing as mostly false considered one of the nation's fastest growing area, crime, while still higher than the national average is down, as well. We also want to mention, George, 27 members of Congress are now boycotting the inauguration.
In the follow up report, anchor George Stephanopoulos then brought on Democratic pollster and author of the book A Black Man in the White House Cornell Belcher, to lecture Trump for going after Lewis.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Boy, this is the latest chapter in Donald Trump's long and pretty fractious relationship with the African-American community.
BELCHER: It's tough but you hope that he's got to do better, right.
Belcher went on to explain how it was a bad idea for Trump to attack the “iconic civil rights leader” after he had one of “the most racially divisive campaigns we’ve ever seen.”
Belcher then claimed that Obama never went after his critics:
BELCHER: Lord knows people went after Barack Obama but he never went back in a sort of personal matter.
Stephanopoulos then asked what Trump could do to improve his “relationship with the African American community” before Belcher responded with a laundry list of issues.
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