President Donald Trump made a brief unannounced stop at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Monday morning as the country honors the civil rights icon.
Vice President Mike Pence accompanied Trump to the memorial and gazed on adoringly as the president spoke.
“Good morning, everybody,” Trump said after he laid a wreath. “It’s a great day. It’s a beautiful day. And thank you for being here. Appreciate it.”
Watch below:
The visit lasted approximately two minutes. Trump did not mention King or King's legacy.
Following the visit, Trump wrote a short tribute to King on Twitter.
"Today," Trump wrote, "we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or the place of our birth, we are all created equal by God. #MLKDay"
The tweet was met with ferocious jeering.
Trump's candidacy and presidency have inflamed racial tensions like we have not seen in decades.
Did Trump really write that tweet? Some are skeptical.
Trump's comments about immigrants - whom he has derided as "rapists and criminals" - are fresh in the country's memory, as are his false claims that refugees are mounting an "invasion" of the United States through the southern border.
And then there was the march on Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, when a radicalized white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer.
Trump's response was to say there were "very decent people" on "both sides."
Trump described himself last October as a "nationalist," a term synonymous with racism.
Last year, The president faced flak for traveling to Mar-a-Lago, his private golf resort in Florida, instead of continuing the presidential tradition of volunteering and touring other monuments.
Given Trump's history of racially-charged remarks about people of color, many feel his presence is a disservice to MLK's memory.
Gotta get that photo opp though.
The president is damned if he does and damned if he does not - by his own doing.
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter