Trump will hold a rally Saturday evening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the ravages of endemic racism and a spiking Coronavirus will collide in an unpredictable, in-your-face, volatile mix that strips away any remaining vestiges of the crumbling facade that Trump gives the slightest damn about anything, or anyone, but himself.
In other words, Trump is holding a divisive, delusional rally, revealingly, at precisely the wrong place and exactly the wrong time.
While Tulsa and the state of Oklahoma have seen Covid-19 cases spike in recent weeks, the Trump campaign plans to pack a 19,000-seat arena with rabid fans without requiring they wear face coverings to protect them from the virus' spread.
As health officials from every walk strongly advise against such insanity -- Trump doesn't care.
Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany,
Descript
Trump's own personal Squealer the pig -- who in Animal Farm constantly and enthusiastically twisted the truth for the leader pig, Napoleon -- assures, temperatures will be taken at the door, sanitizer handed out and masks supplied.
The Trump campaign, however, won't mandate that the masks be worn. Trump is thumbing his nose at science, rejecting all reason, misleading masses so he can satisfy that Realty TV-shtick impulse to shock, delude and incite.
So, why would a demonstrated demagogue like Trump, amidst national racial upheaval, decide to hold a rally on Juneteenth (Fri., June 19) weekend that celebrates Slavery's end, and in a city that, this same month 99 years ago, was ground zero of the "Tulsa Race Massacre" which left 300 black people slaughtered and an entire wealthy black community destroyed?
Some 35 blocks of America's wealthiest black community, known as "Black Wall Street," was burned to the ground and estimated 10,000 black citizens we're left homeless in one the gravest acts of racial violence in American history.
The answer is clear. Just as he has done -- ever since this country saw the misfortune of Trump entering the presidential race five excruciatingly long years ago -- the divider-in-chief is stoking the fires of hatred and violence.
In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified four different hate groups active in Oklahoma: the American Identity Movement (White Nationalist), Patriot Front (White Nationalist), Patriotic Brigade Knights of the Klu Klux Klan and Proud Boys (classified as "General Hate").
So what further pain will Saturday's hate rally bring?
Whether he's aware of it or not, Trump has abandoned any pretense of caring about racial hatred in the country or the Covid-19 virus which has claimed more than 120,000 lives in America.
Trump never gave any indication that he genuinely cared, of course. While Covid-19 was clearly incubating death across the homeland, Trump blew it off, downplayed it. He's never embraced the full magnitude of this pandemic. He only went through the motions of pretending to care.
And now, when it's simply too damn inconvenient to his re-election hopes and his narcissistic drive to grandstand and bamboozle the desperately gullible, the President is hedging his bets, irresponsibly, criminally, throwing caution and the health and safety of Americans, to the wind.
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