Representative John Lewis (D -- Georgia) recently stated in a Meet the Press interview on NBC News that he did not believe that President-elect Trump will be a legitimate president, citing the Russian hackings as his reason. On Saturday, President-elect Trump fired back on Twitter.
Mr. Trump either does not know who Representative Lewis is and what he has done, or he is willfully ignoring the facts, something that he does quite often. Representative Lewis is an esteemed civil rights leader whose contributions to the Civil Rights Movement are well known. He spoke at the March on Washington in 1963, marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. on the march from Selma to Montgomery, and received a fractured skull at the hands of riot police. Since 1986, he has served his district and has received much respect in Congress from both sides of the aisle. For President-elect Trump to call Rep. Lewis "all talk, talk, talk - no action or results" is absolutely disgraceful and diminishes Lewis' work towards equality for all people.
However, Rep. Lewis is indeed wrong to call President-elect Trump's upcoming presidency "illegitimate." First of all, while the Russian hackings should indeed be investigated and Russia should be held accountable for its actions, it did not directly influence voting. There is no evidence to support the fact that in any way did hackers get into polling booths nor committed widespread voter fraud. The Russians mostly exposed leaked emails from the Clinton campaign and created uncertainty around her candidacy. Obviously, foreign governments should not meddle in our affairs, but the truth is the truth. While voters may have been influenced by leaked information, this information should have been made public instead of being hidden. Without the evidence of tampering with the votes, the election was legitimate. The Electoral System may have many flaws, but its legitimacy should not be questioned. It is a electoral system that has been in place since the writing of the Constitution, and until it is either changed or replaced, the outcome should not be challenged. Mr. Trump won fair and square. Sorry if you can't handle it.
