On Saturday's edition of MSNBC's "Weekends," former Obama administration aide Khalilah Harris speculated that President Donald Trump's decision to move the Tulsa rally away from Juneteenth wasn't really based on respect for the Black community, but fear of being confronted by counterprotesters — who plan to still demonstrate in Tulsa even though Trump won't be there.
"How do you assess that backtrack?" asked anchor Alex Witt. "He says he spoke to his African-American friends. He transmitted that on Twitter. Should he maybe have spoken to them beforehand, or was this a willful act by this president?"
"It was absolutely willful," said Harris. "He set up a scenario where he then would show that he fixed everything by caring about the Juneteenth commemoration. And what's ridiculous about this is that he needed his supposed Black friend to tell him what Juneteenth was. And that is indicative of the times that we're in, that we have a sitting president who was unclear about the significance of enslavement for his constituents, and the fact that it was even suggested is very calculated."
"I'd imagine he didn't want to face the counterprotesters, because, as I'm understanding it, there are many people who are saddling up to go to Tulsa because he was not only disrespecting the commemoration of Juneteenth, but also the Tulsa race riots, being the worst act of racial terrorism in this country in Oklahoma in 1920," continued Harris. "So the fact that he would try to open up a rally on Juneteenth, and on the commemoration of the Tulsa burning of Black Wall Street — absolutely intentional, and [what] we need to remember when we go to the ballot box."
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