In an assertion that’s someway as bold as it is clueless, President Donald Trump is congratulating himself for spreading awareness of Juneteenth, the working day celebrating the stop of slavery in The usa.
Trump built the assert in an job interview with The Wall Avenue Journal, responding to a concern about his possessing prepared a marketing campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma ― the place a horrific racist massacre took position in 1921 ― on Juneteenth.
“I did something fantastic: I created Juneteenth extremely famed,” Trump informed the paper, applauding himself for the adverse media protection his rally day generated. “It’s essentially an critical occasion, an important time. But no one experienced at any time listened to of it.”
Trump responded to the outrage by postponing the rally by just one working day. He instructed the Journal he didn’t know the indicating of Juneteenth until a Solution Assistance agent who is Black defined it to him.
Not only was Trump clueless ― so were his staffers, even even though the White Property has commemorated the day each and every year considering that Trump took office environment. Here’s the Journal’s retelling of that part of the job interview:
Mr. Trump claimed he polled quite a few individuals close to him, none of whom had read of Juneteenth. Mr. Trump paused the job interview to talk to an aide if she had heard of Juneteenth, and she pointed out that the White Home had issued a statement final 12 months commemorating the working day. Mr. Trump’s White House has set out statements on Juneteenth through each of his initially three yrs.
“Oh really? We place out a assertion? The Trump White Residence set out a statement?” Mr. Trump said. “Ok, alright. Good.”
The bizarre boast is however far more evidence of Trump’s tenuous grasp on Black record. In 2017, the President gave a televised speech in honor of Black Heritage Month and seemed to have minimal strategy who Frederick Douglass was ― or even that he was no for a longer period alive.
Trump referenced Douglass — a male who escaped slavery to grow to be an acclaimed creator, abolitionist and civil legal rights activist — as “an example of any person who has done an incredible position and is currently being identified additional and extra, I see.”
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