Trump’s Tulsa rally was irresponsible, racially insensitive (commentary)

Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
June 25, 2020
By Joni Ashbrook

President Donald Trump was itchin’ for a huge room full of adoring supporters. Rallies are like a drug that feeds his narcissistic personality, and he needed a fix.

Warnings that the rally’s time and place were problematic due to the coronavirus rolled off Trump like CDC recommendations to GOP governors.

Besides Trump’s short stint participating in the coronavirus daily briefings, he’s downplayed the virus from the very beginning.

Trump was advised to stop doing the briefings because he was seen more as a “super spreader” of misinformation and bizarre cures, such as injecting disinfectant, than the leader Americans needed.

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Since Trump doesn’t know how to lead us through this crisis, he’s given up even pretending to try, and now he’s retreated to what he knows best conning people.

Trump’s an official flim-flam man since the courts ordered him pay $25 million to the people he swindled with his fake Trump University scheme.

Now he’s using his snake-oil-salesman tricks to gaslight the public into thinking the virus is simply “fading away.” But nothing could be farther from the truth since cases are rising in 22 states, including Texas and Oklahoma.

That’s not surprising since Trump never created a coordinated federal response to the pandemic and now he’s undermining the only tools we have to protect ourselves as we reopen the economy.

Instead of encouraging people to follow health experts’ recommendations, such as wearing a mask, he’s actually mocking and politicizing them.

Trump’s rally was a perfect example of what experts say not to do during the pandemic: no large “indoor” gatherings that include shouting or singing with no social distancing.

The rally kicked off with the news that six campaign staffers who’d been working (without masks) in Tulsa for a week tested positive for COVID-19.

In typical Trump style, his only real concern was for himself. The rally-goers had to sign a waiver agreeing not to sue if they contracted the coronavirus.

Not only are we grappling with a virus that’s killed over 120,000 Americans and a decimated economy, both of which are disproportionally affecting Blacks, but we’re also in the midst of a reckoning with racial injustice and police brutality.

Worldwide protesters have filled the streets demanding meaningful criminal justice reforms and an end to systemic racism after watching a Minneapolis police officer kill George Floyd, an unarmed black man.

Unfortunately, during our nation’s racial awakening, Trump’s still sound asleep. The date and place of his rally holds great significance to the African American community.

In 1921, the Greenwood district in Tulsa was a thriving black area that was burned to the ground by a mob of white people, aided by the National Guard, killing 300 black residents.

Also, before it was changed, the original rally date was June 19th, or Juneteenth, a day commemorating the last slaves learning they were free. That message was brought to them in Galveston, Texas more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

African Americans don’t see Trump as an ally in their their fight for justice and an end to police brutality for several reasons.

For example, protesters are calling for the controversial head of the Minneapolis police union to go. He’s seen as a racist that wore a white supremacist’s group patch, but last year Trump welcomed him onto his rally stage.

An ally to the African American community would have instead invited onto that stage the black police chief that was elected to reform the troubled department.

The Tulsa rally demonstrated that Trump’s not only incapable of finding solutions to the two major crises facing America today, but he’s making them worse.

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