Amid rising tensions in the run-up to his inauguration on Friday, US President-elect Donald Trump made a tactical move on Monday by holding a private meeting with civil rights hero Martin luther King’s eldest son as part of an outreach to the African-American populace that clearly dreads his presidency.
Trump’s move follows his angry face-off over the weekend with John lewis, the senior Democratic Congressman and a close associate of Dr King in the civil rights movement, after the latter questioned the legitimacy of his electoral victory and announced he would not attend the inaugural.
A slew of Democratic lawmakers – as many as 44 by last count as per a Washington Post tabulation – have joined the 76-year-old lewis in an orchestrated boycott of the inaugural ceremony set to be held as always on the steps of the US Capitol building.
One of them, Congressman Brendan Boyle from Pennsylvania, described
Trump as “a unique threat to the Constitution and to our country”, adding: “I have never before used such stark terms to describe an American political leader, Democrat or Republican. I do not use these words lightly. But Trump warrants such dramatic description.”
In what was a hastily-arranged meeting at Trump Tower in New York, the President-elect met with Martin luther King III, who later called it a “constructive” session and spoke of Trump’s assurances that he would be an inclusive president, representing all Americans. “We will continue to evaluate that,” King remarked during a brief media interaction after the meeting.
In the presidential election, Trump managed to garner a mere 8 per cent of the African-American vote. The black community has all along viewed the New York billionaire with skepticism, given his earlier “birther” campaign asserting that President Barack Obama was not a natural-born US citizen.
Trump and the liberal mainstream media, meanwhile, continue to be at daggers drawn. On Tuesday, the President-elect slammed new polls by CNN and ABC News-Washington Post that talked of his poor approval rating.
“The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before,” Trump tweeted soon after CNN painted him as the least popular among recent presidents at the time of their inaugural. It put Trump’s approval rating at a mere 40 per cent, compared to Obama’s 84 per cent, Bill Clinton’s 67 per cent and George W. Bush’s 61 per cent when they took office. The ABC News-WP poll came up with almost matching numbers.
Trump has let it be known that even after moving into the White House, he would much rather use his social media accounts to reach out to his national audience than depend on the “dishonest” mainstream media.
An avid tweeter, Trump on Monday crossed a personal Twitter milestone with his followers now put at more than 20 million. Together with his Facebook and Instagram accounts, Trump now boasts of 46 million followers in the three premier social media sites.
Officials of Trump Transition have indicated that the President-elect would maintain his personal Twitter account instead of the official POTUS (President of the United States) account. As Trump himself said in an interview to Britain’s Sunday Times and Germany’s Bild over the weekend, he would much rather go “bing bing bing” on the Twitter since he was being “covered so dishonestly by the Press”.