Donald Trump is heading to Tulsa on Saturday for his first campaign rally in months, and not everyone in the city is happy to hear it. The editorial board of the local newspaper, for instance, which says “This is the wrong time” and “the wrong place” for Trump to rally.
“We don’t know why he chose Tulsa, but we can’t see any way that his visit will be good for the city,” a Tulsa World editorial says, citing the pandemic, the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, and the big question mark around the choice of Tulsa to begin with.
When it comes to the pandemic, the editorial points out, “It will be our health care system that will have to deal with whatever effects follow.” That’s not just about Trump: “The public health concern would apply whether it were Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anyone else who was planning a mass rally at the BOK.”
With protests against police brutality and racism still happening around the country, and with Trump being “a divisive figure” (no kidding on that), the editorial writers worry about “confrontation and inappropriate behavior from some,” with Tulsa stuck with the burden of handling the fallout. Not noted in the editorial, Trump rallies have left a lot of cities with big unpaid bills for the security they had to provide.
And why Tulsa, for that matter?
“There’s no reason to think a Trump appearance in Tulsa will have any effect on November’s election outcome in Tulsa or Oklahoma,” the editorial points out—Trump won Oklahoma by more than 35 points in 2016, after all—and “It has already concentrated the world’s attention of the fact that Trump will be rallying in a city that 99 years ago was the site of a bloody race massacre.”
(But hey, at least he changed the rally's date from Juneteenth, the day celebrating the end of slavery!)