One date change and one unsuccessful legal challenge later, Donald Trump’s return to campaign rallies is still scheduled for Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma. How, though? Why is Trump having a rally at the site of a 1921 race massacre on a date when, despite the rally’s move off of Juneteenth itself, Black Tulsans will still be celebrating independence?
J.C. Watts, a former member of Congress who is both Black and a Republican, gave the basic rundown, telling The New York Times he wondered “if there’s any African-Americans in the White House that’s high enough that has a seat at the table.” If there was, “It would have been helpful for one of them to say to him, ‘Mr. President, Juneteenth is to the black community what the Emancipation Proclamation is to Abraham Lincoln.’”
Trump was willing to move the rally date, the Times reports, “in part because it did not involve caving on something he had said or a theory he had promoted, but rather involved publicly overturning a decision made by his campaign aides.”
Trump had instructed Fox News to “Think about it as a celebration,” when asked about the date, but he hadn’t fully committed and hey, his relationship with campaign manager Brad Parscale has been wobbly as his polling numbers sink. Parscale reportedly chose the location and date for the rally—Tulsa because Oklahoma was well into reopening and hadn’t had too many coronavirus deaths to begin with, and Juneteenth because … ignorance, apparently. What looked like an intentional dog whistle to Trump’s racist base may really have just been complete ignorance of the significance of the date.
The Times reports that some White House aides did mention Juneteenth once Parscale let them know the plan, but—and this is just perfect—“he responded that the campaign had held events on Jewish holidays, and last year held a ‘Merry Christmas’ rally in Battle Creek, Mich., none of which were criticized as disrespectful to the people who celebrated those holidays. He said he thought it would not be a problem.” There’s no difference between holding a Merry Christmas rally and holding a racist rally on a day commemorating Black independence, is there?
Anyway, they moved the date and now it’s just a racist rally on the site of a race massacre a day after, but still during the celebrations for, Juneteenth. Oh, and there’s still a pandemic on and COVID-19 cases are rising fast in Tulsa and the city’s Republican mayor is concerned (though still honored to have Trump in his city, blah blah blah).
So this should be great.