- Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Saturday in a because-deleted tweet shared a image of himself with the late Rep. Elijah Cummings when honoring Rep. John Lewis, who died Friday.
- The two lawmakers had commonly been confused for a person an additional through their lifetimes, so a lot so that Lewis in 2019 joked he would grow a beard to differentiate hinself from Cummings.
- Lewis, a civil legal rights icon, died Friday at the age of 80 immediately after a bout with Phase IV pancreatic cancer.
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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Saturday in a tweet shared his thoughts about the dying of civil legal rights icon, Ga Rep. John Lewis who died Friday right after a bout with Phase IV pancreatic cancer.
“It was an honor to know & be blessed with the chance to provide in Congress with JohnLewis a authentic & historic American hero. May the Lord grant him everlasting peace,” the Florida Republican wrote in a tweet Saturday afternoon.
But as several on Twitter were being fast to issue out, the image the Florida senator shared did not present him with Lewis, but rather with one more late Black lawmaker — Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings who died unexpectedly in October 2019 at the age of 68.
The photo was even briefly Rubio’s profile impression on Twitter in advance of it alongside with his tweet disappeared.
Marco Rubio/Twitter
Rubio’s evident flub was not the initially time that the two late congressmen had been perplexed for 1 a different. The two African American legislators experienced been mistaken for just about every other so considerably that in an April 2019 push launch, Lewis wrote that he was taking into consideration developing a beard to established him apart from his colleague from Maryland.
In a stick to-up tweet, Rubio acknowledged he “tweeted an incorrect photo” and shared what appears to be a screenshot image of himself with Lewis from 2017 look in Miami.
—Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 18, 2020
“Just this weekend, I went to church in Maryland,” Lewis stated in a statement past yr. “Another person came up to me and claimed, ‘Hi, Mr. Cummings! I vote for you all the time.’ I just mentioned thank you. What else could I say? That’s when I made a decision, I should really just improve a beard.”
Lewis in the statement advised the comparisons had been simply because both equally African American lawmakers had been bald, contacting this kind of issues “baldist.”
Media retailers from CBS News to Fox News have also formerly puzzled the two lawmakers. Earlier this 12 months, CBS News confirmed a image of Cummings, who had previously died, in the course of a phase on “CBS Evening News” about Lewis’ cancer analysis.
“People prevent me all the time and tell me they are from Maryland,” Lewis wrote in the April 2019 assertion. “I’m John Lewis, from Georgia. Rep. Cummings is a excellent buddy of mine, but we are not the very same human being.
“I thought of receiving a tattoo on the back of my head, just to very clear items up. I tried out to convince Elijah to get 1 way too, but that did not go around so well.
Study far more:
Rep. John Lewis, civil rights icon, was a strong voice against war with Iraq
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