Activist Martin Luther King III ventured to Trump Tower Monday, Jan. 16, to meet with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss and defend the voting rights act.
Just four days out from Trump’s inauguration, King met with the intent to pressure Trump on voting rights for minorities, and he urged Trump’s critics to work with the president-elect despite philosophical differences.
“It is very clear that the system is not working at its maximum,” King says. “And through an op-ed you may have seen, we’ve provided at least a solution to begin to address a broken voting system. That was the dialogue, most of the dialogue that we talked about constructively.”
King said that his meeting was about the issues. In wake of a controversy between the real estate mogul and Rep. John Lewis of Georgia over the president-elect’s legitimacy, King offered to be a mediator.
“I am, as John Lewis and many others are, a bridge builder,” King says. The goal is to bring America together and Americans. We are a great nation. But we must become a greater nation. What my father represented, my mother represented through her life, and what I hope I’m trying to do is bring people together.”
Lastly, King wanted people to realize that there are bigger issues to focus on: “Things get said on both sides in the heat of emotion. And at some point, this nation’s got to move forward. People are literally probably dying. We need to be talking about how do we feed people? How do we clothe people? That’s what we need to be focused on.”
