President Trump will speak before the General Assembly at Jamestown on Tuesday to help commemorate the 400th anniversary of representative government in the United States, a White House official confirmed Friday. Several Democratic lawmakers vowed to boycott any event attended by Trump when news broke last week that he had been invited to the ceremonies.
The state has been planning the Jamestown events for several years to mark the first time 20 burgesses chosen by colonists gathered on July 30, 1619. That General Assembly met for six days and suggested a raft of laws that were sent back to England and approved by the Virginia Company, the investors who were bankrolling the colony. It was the beginning of democracy in the New World.
Virginia has traditionally hosted presidents when it marks big anniversaries at Jamestown — Theodore Roosevelt attended in 1907 for the 300th anniversary of the colony’s founding, and George W. Bush participated in the 400th in 2007.
Democrats said Trump’s divisive policies on immigration, inflammatory statements about race and recent proclamation that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” made him unwelcome.
Next month, the state also will mark the 400th anniversary of the 1619 arrival of the first Africans in the colonies, who were brought in chains and enslaved.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/trump-will-speak-at-jamestown-event-marking-400-years-of-representative-government/2019/07/26/9320b69c-b003-11e9-a0c9-6d2d7818f3da_story.html?utm_term=.53c571812435