Marco Rubio Posts Image Of Elijah Cummings While Trying To Memorialize John Lewis
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida honored Rep. John Lewis on Twitter with a message and image showing him and the respected civil rights leader together. But as many people on social media were quick to point out, the senator had actually posted an image of himself and Rep. Elijah. E. Cummings, who died last October.
Rubio also made the image his Twitter avatar before realizing the mistake. He quickly deleted the photo, but not before others had taken screenshots of it and posted them on social media.
Wesley Lowery, a former correspondent for 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, chided Rubio while tweeting a screenshot of the post, which you can view here.
Rubio corrected the image with a new tweet featuring a link to a video of himself and Lewis together.
“Earlier today I tweeted an incorrect photo – John Lewis was a genuine American hero – I was honored to appear together in Miami 3 years ago at an event captured in video below – My God grant him eternal rest,” he wrote on Twitter.
You can view the tweet here.
Memes quickly started spreading showing pictures of men who were not Marco Rubio but labeled as the senior Florida senator.
Others came to Rubio’s defense, pointing out that Lewis and Cummings look similar in the eyes of some people.
Matt Fuller, a writer for HuffPost, backed up the critics.
“The reason you keep seeing people dunk on Marco Rubio for his John Lewis-Elijah Cummings mixup is because it’s part of a broader GOP phenomenon of publicly grieving Lewis’s death while largely being a stranger and opponent to his politics. We all sense it. Rubio just defined it,” he wrote.
As The New York Times later reported, Nick Iacovella — a spokesman for Rubio — said that the initial photo was posted after it was mislabeled. The photo was taken by Lauren Schneiderman and was placed on her personal website. The Times confirmed that the photo did in fact label Cummings as Lewis.
Rubio wasn’t the only Republican to make the mistake. Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska also posted a picture of Cummings standing in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. He later removed the image.
Lewis died on Friday, as The Inquisitr previously reported, after battling pancreatic cancer. He was a leader in the fight for civil rights in the U.S. and part of the original Freedom Riders. He also walked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. to fight for voting rights in Alabama.
