Donald Trump is seeking to take credit for making Juneteenth
-- a day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States -- "very
famous," after rescheduling his first rally since the start of the
pandemic to avoid further criticism for seeming to co-opt it.
"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very
famous," Trump said in reference to the rally date in an interview
published Thursday. "It's actually an important event, an important time.
But nobody had ever heard of it."
Juneteenth is the oldest regular U.S. celebration of the end
of slavery. It commemorates June 19, 1865: the day that Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon
Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and told a group of enslaved
African-Americans that the Civil War had ended and they had been freed.
Trump didn't seem to know that his White House had been
putting out public statements commemorating the day throughout his tenure in
office. "Oh, really? We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out
a statement?" Trump said, adding that that was "good."
No comments:
Post a Comment