Marco Rubio honors John Lewis with photo of Elijah Cummings

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was roasted on Twitter Saturday after he mistakenly posted a photograph of the late Elijah Cummings in a message meant to honor civil rights icon and veteran Georgia Congressman John Lewis.

Lewis died on Friday at the age of 80 following a battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Rubio remembered the Democrat in a tweet, saying it “was an honor to know & be blessed with the opportunity to serve in Congress” with Lewis, who he described as a “genuine & historic American hero.”

Accompanying the tribute was a photograph of Rubio with Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who served in the U.S. House of Representatives until his death last October.

Rubio also made the image his Twitter profile picture.

Journalists and others on Twitter were quick to point out the senator’s error.

Rubio later deleted the tweet and changed his profile picture. He also acknowledged that he “tweeted an incorrect photo” and posted a new image, this time of him and Lewis.

The new image was from a video captured during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Miami that Lewis had attended.

Cummings had joked before about being mistaken for Lewis in public.

“I’ve gotten a lot of pictures taken where people just assume that I was John Lewis,” Cummings said in the 2020 documentary “John Lewis: Good Trouble.”

“But you know what,” the congressman quipped, “I am so glad that they mistake me for a great man.