Thursday on MSNBC, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) accused President Donald Trump of being “callous” and “disrespectful” for planing his upcoming rally in Tulsa, OK on June 19, which is Juneteenth, a holiday that marks the end of slavery.
Host Joy Reid said, “The president is facing a backlash over his decision to hold a campaign rally on Juneteeth, a day celebrated by black Americans marking the end of slavery and for doing so of all places in Tulsa, Oklahoma the site of the deadliest race riot in American history. In 1921 when the Black Wall Street section of Tulsa was burned and bombed and destroyed by white supremacists just because they could.
Reid asked, “What do you make of Donald Trump’s decision on the date and the place of holding his rally?”
Booker said, “It speaks to not only to his profound ignorance and callous disregard for American history, but even the people around him this is painful. I went to Tulsa to this Black Wall Street. I admit, as an African American who knows my history, I always thought this was a bombing of a street, of a section, but this was an entire community, thousands of homes, businesses flattened. The last structure standing being Vernon AME church where the pastor there is doing an amazing job of trying to work with others to make sure this history is never forgotten. Ariel bombing before Pearl Harbor on our own soil, to kill and destroy American American lives and livelihoods.”
He added, “So for him not to recognize this but not only to go there to do a rally where we are sure to see signs of many of the supporters who do believe in white supremacy’s failure to actually condemn those elements of those narrow elements of his base but for him to do it on Juneteenth that he should be recognizing as the president of the United States is all the more disrespectful and painful but not surprising.”
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