Donald Trump bristled at moving his comeback rally in Tulsa due to a scheduling conflict with Juneteenth.
The former president had scheduled his first rally since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic for June 19, 2020, but he was notified -- by a Black Secret Service agent, he says -- of the date's historical significance and the extra weight it carried in the days following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd, according to excerpts from a new book published by The Hill.
Can you imagine “changing the day of the rally in Oklahoma to accommodate these people?” Trump groused, according to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “Have you ever heard of such a ridiculous thing?”
Murphy and his wife had joined Trump for dinner at his golf club in Bedminster, where the former president told the couple that he was looking forward to packing the arena to show off his electoral strength, but he ultimately agreed to reschedule for a day later -- and then claimed credit for popularizing the day marking the end of slavery in the U.S.
“I did something good," Trump said. "I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."
The rally ultimately drew a much smaller crowd than had been expected, with at least a third of the seats empty at BOK Center, and a spokesman for his campaign later blamed the paltry attendance on "radical protesters."
Meanwhile, Trump is scheduled to speak tonight at a rally at 9pm ET tonight in support of embattled Nebraska Gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster.
After Herbster, a businessman endorsed by former President Donald Trump, was accused of sexually assaulting eight women, including a state senator, Republicans throughout the state washed their hands of him, and sitting Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts told him to end his campaign and "get help."
But according to POLITICO on Thursday, Trump himself is still all in on Herbster's candidacy.
"Trump did not withdraw his support for Herbster, or scrap plans to hold a Friday evening rally for the candidate in Nebraska. Instead, he doubled down: The former president relayed word that Herbster wasn’t fighting back hard enough, backing plans for Herbster to hold a press conference aggressively denying the allegations and pushing back at his adversaries," reported Alex Isenstadt.