https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/marco-rubio-tweets-a-tribute-to-john-lewis-using-the-photo-of-a-different-black-congressman/2020/07/18/381d9f8a-c92f-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html?

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing May 5 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Andrew Harnik/Reuters)

Colby Itkowitz

Congress, campaigns, health policy, Pennsylvania politics

July 18 at 5:57 PM

Like many of their colleagues, GOP Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) posted tributes to Rep. John Lewis on Saturday and aimed to include photos of themselves with the civil rights icon who died Friday. Rubio even made the image his Twitter profile picture.

There was just one problem. The photos they each posted were of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, who died in October.

“It was an honor to know & be blessed with the opportunity to serve in Congress with John Lewis a genuine & historic American hero,” Rubio tweeted with the photo of himself and Cummings.

“It was an honor to have served alongside John for a small portion of his impressive career of service, and to have joined him at the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, a years-long effort of the congressman,” Sullivan wrote on Facebook with the photo of himself and Cummings outside the museum.

The response on Twitter was a mix of anger and ridicule, with many users posting photos of various white Republican congressmen and labeling them Rubio, whose blunder happened first. Others chided the senators for the faux pas of mixing up two people of color, especially given that they had interacted with both of them in person.

Rubio and Sullivan weren’t the first to mix up the two men. It happened so often that Lewis even mentioned it in a tribute to Cummings on the House floor after his death.

“Sometimes people would confuse us and say, ‘Hello, Elijah’ to me or ‘Hello, John Lewis’ to him,” Lewis said. “And we would joke about it, we would laugh about it.”

Both Fox News and CBS have used photos of one when speaking about the other in their broadcasts.