TRUMP NOT SORRY FOR WANTING INNOCENT BLACK TEENS DEAD

On this day, 36 years ago, a group of teenagers were hanging out in New York's Central Park. On the same day, a 28-year-old woman, Trisha Meili, was jogging in the park. She was later found beaten and r*ped, and was in a coma for 12 days.

Thus came about the case of the Central Park 5, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers falsely accused and jailed for sexual assault. It illustrates how the odds are stacked against our people as they struggle against injustice and oppression in the United States. None other than future US president Donald Trump would seek to subvert the justice system against them.

The businessman-cum-politician is known for his controversial statements, and Africans, in particular, have been on the receiving end of some of Trump's most derogatory vitriol - for example, his branding Haiti and African nations' sh*thole countries.'

In this 1989 clip, we get a taste of Trump's profound disrespect for and devaluation of Black lives. At the time, he took out full-page ads in several newspapers to advocate for the death penalty - in the hope that it would be applied to the Central Park 5. The accused each served between five and thirteen years after a jury convicted them, based on a confession they said was obtained through coercion by the police - before being exonerated in 2002 when the actual attacker confessed. His DNA matched that found at the crime scene.

In 2019, when asked if he would be willing to apologise to the men for calling for their execution, Trump said he would not. In late 2024, he misstated key facts, saying the teenagers, now grown men, 'badly hurt a person, k*lled a person, ultimately.' The five men sued him for defamation, and a federal judge ruled on April 10 that the case could proceed despite Trump's request to have it dropped.

Video credit: PBS America, NBC, CNN

Sources

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judge-refuses-dismiss-central-park-fives-defamation-case-120719536

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48609693

https://apnews.com/article/central-park-five-donald-trump-defamation-lawsuit-d7107a64130be9723d79c6cc52dfd0dd

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/feb/17/donald-trump-central-park-five-jogger-death-penalty-new-york-video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67pQmshOOvA