Asked if he thought Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts were appropriate given Mr. Lewis’s biography and record, Mr. Pence said that the president-elect “has the right to defend himself” and that Mr. Trump had wished to call attention to Democratic policy failures in America’s cities.

A spokesman for the Trump transition team said it would have no further comment.

Many of the members of Congress who will not attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration said they planned to instead meet with activists and focus on how to push back against Mr. Trump’s administration.

Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the dean of the House of Representatives, was among those announcing that he would not be attending the inauguration and was gearing up to fight Mr. Trump. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that accountability is brought to bear on the administration and that the Constitution and our nation’s laws are adhered to, as no one is above the law,” he wrote in a statement.

Representative Barbara Lee of California said Mr. Trump “has demeaned and insulted the African-American community, and we are going to have to really raise our voices and resist this if these views are going to be reflected in his policies.”

Others skipping the event include Representatives Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona; Maxine Waters of California; Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois; Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts; William Lacy Clay of Missouri; Nydia M. Velázquez, Jerrold Nadler and José E. Serrano of New York; Marcia L. Fudge of Ohio; Earl Blumenauer and Kurt Schrader of Oregon; and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.

Mr. Trump had scant support in the black community before his transition began; only about 8 percent of blacks voted for him on Nov. 8. The relationship seemed further imperiled when Mr. Trump appointed his White House chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, who some people fear will bring nationalist and racist views to the West Wing.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who led a march on Saturday in Washington, said Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts drove more people to brave the cold to demonstrate.