07/27/2020 03:36 pm ET
Thousands of people are expected to visit Capitol Hill to pay respects to congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, but President Donald Trump won’t be one of them.
“No, I won’t be going,” the president told reporters Monday. “No.”
“I won’t be going.”
Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House that he would not go to pay respects to Congressman John Lewis as he lies in state at the Capitol pic.twitter.com/dkcOOvHvsY
— Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) July 27, 2020
The president made his comment as he was leaving the White House for North Carolina just as Lewis’ American flag-draped casket was arriving at the Capitol carried by a military honor guard into the rotunda.
Lewis, who died July 17 at the age of 80, will be lying in state at the U.S. Capitol until Thursday’s funeral at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once led.
Trump did not say why he was declining to visit Lewis.