When President Trump’s official calendar showed no events scheduled on the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, tongues wagged with comments that the president was again rejecting the traditional trappings of his office by ignoring the day dedicated to the memory of the martyred civil rights leader and non-violent protest advocate.
Trump surprised everyone this morning, however, by making an unexpected — if perfunctory — visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington DC.
Accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence — who faced a torrent of criticism this weekend for using a quote from Dr. King to imply that his values were aligned with Trump’s push to restrict immigration and erect a wall on the Southern border — the president spent almost a full two minutes at the memorial in a visit shorter than the typical restroom trip.
The White House press pool was notified of the visit at the last minute and issued a timeline of Trump’s grudgingly obligatory paying of respect to the slain Reverend that reflected the momentary nature of the president’s contemplation on this day of remembrance.
According to the pool report, Trump was at the MLK memorial "for approximately two minutes."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 21, 2019
President Trump did in fact place a wreath at the #MLK memorial. Per WH pool it was an efficient trip:
11:06am left WH
11:12am arrive MLK Memorial
11:15am left MLK Memorial
11:22am back at WH— Steve Chenevey FOX5 (@stevechenevey) January 21, 2019
The fact that Trump was thoughtful enough to move a wreath two feet from where it had been placed for he and the vice president to briefly carry closer to the memorial demonstrates just how efficient the visit must have been, since the time it took for the two men to take a hold of the wreath and move it must have consumed at least 10 seconds of his time at the site.
Now that President Trump has visited the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the holiday dedicated to the venerated civil rights icon, one expects that he now feels absolved of any charges of supporting white nationalism and relieved of any responsibility for his political agenda which is designed to roll back all of the social progress that Dr. King’s work inspired.
And they said he didn’t care.
You can watch a video of today’s presidential visit to the MLK memorial in the clip below.
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Original reporting by David Edwards at RawStory.
