Throughout Tuesday evening’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump doubled down on considered one of his most notoriously racist stunts, seemingly defending his determination to run ads calling for a gaggle of 5 Black and Latino youngsters to be executed.
As a substitute of apologizing to the wrongly convicted youngsters, who at the moment are grown males, Trump used the highlight afforded him to name them responsible another time.
“They admitted — they said, they pled guilty,” Trump mentioned, responding to a comment from Vice President Kamala Harris about his actions.
“And I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately, and if they pled guilty,’” he concluded.
One of many exonerated males, Yusef Salaam, approached Trump after the talk when the previous president made an sudden look within the spin room.
“That’s good, you’re on my side!” Trump exclaimed when he noticed Salaam, smiling and pointing at him.
Salaam, now a New York Metropolis Council member, retorted: “No, no, I’m not on your side!”
Recognized on the time because the “Central Park Five,” the 5 teenagers have been wrongfully accused of raping a jogger in New York Metropolis in 1989. Trump spent $85,000 on a full-page advert in The New York Instances studying, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY, BRING BACK OUR POLICE.”
The boys, who have been all between the ages of 14 and 16, spent between 5 and 12 years wrongfully imprisoned till a serial rapist confessed to the crime ― and DNA confirmed that he had dedicated it.
4 of the now-adult males — who at the moment are also referred to as the “Exonerated Five” — appeared onstage on the Democratic Nationwide Conference final month and reminded the viewers that Trump nonetheless someway stands by the unique verdict.
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“Today, we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed, and DNA proved it,” Salaam informed the gang.
“He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong. He has never changed, and he never will. That man thinks that hate is the animating force in America. It is not.”
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