Posted on 06/18/2020 12:08:46 PM PDT by karpov
President Trump said that there was some systemic racism in the U.S. and that removing Confederate names from military bases would further divide the country, and took credit for popularizing Juneteenth, the commemoration of the end of slavery.
In an interview on Wednesday in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump mounted a broad defense of his handling of the dual crises affecting the country in the year of his re-election bid: the coronavirus pandemic and the wave of protests following the killing of George Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody.
Mr. Trump expressed interest in rooting out racism in America and said his plan to heal the country’s racial wounds exposed by the killing of Mr. Floyd and other high-profile cases of alleged police brutality was to build a strong economy. He expressed cautious optimism that any structural racism that exists in America’s economic and criminal-justice systems is getting better.
“I’d like to think there is not” systemic racism, Mr. Trump said, “but unfortunately, there probably is some. I would also say it’s very substantially less than it used to be.”
He said that the country was nearing the end of the coronavirus pandemic and that he believed China might have encouraged the international spread of coronavirus as a way to destabilize competing economies.
“There’s a chance it was intentional,” Mr. Trump said. The president and some international critics have said China should have moved more quickly to contain the coronavirus in December and January. Beijing has defended its response and denied it concealed the extent of the spread.
Mr. Trump said testing for Covid-19 was overrated and allowed for the possibility that some Americans wore facial coverings not as a preventive measure but as a way to signal disapproval of him.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Dang it. I wish he would've added, "But where it does still exist seems to be concentrated in Democrat controlled cities and states. Go figure."
“I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous,” Mr. Trump said, referring to news coverage of the rally date. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”
Mr. Trump said he polled many people around him, none of whom had heard of Juneteenth. Mr. Trump paused the interview to ask an aide if she had heard of Juneteenth, and she pointed out that the White House had issued a statement last year commemorating the day. Mr. Trump’s White House has put out statements on Juneteenth during each of his first three years.
“Oh really? We put out a statement? The Trump White House put out a statement?” Mr. Trump said. “OK, OK. Good.”
I think the White House has released a Juneteenth message every year since elected. And he continued: "I don’t think it was put up by others. But we made people aware of it, and it’s good." Obama issued Juneteenth messages. Bush issued Juneteenth messages. For all I know Clinton issued them as well. Trump didn't invent it.
Trump has this wrong. China had no way of knowing that a significant contingent of Freepers now dubbed Fearpers aka Chicken Freepers would gladly bend the knee to progressive governors and allow tyranny to reign while they sat at home collecting government checks.
China should not be blamed for the idiotic and unconstitutional lockdowns. That is all of our own making. China must be laughing at how easy it is to scare Americans silly.
Although I might be convinced that there is a conspiracy amongst China, the Progs, and Fearpers. (a slight jest)
Similarly, one year I was in Germany on Ascension Day, a government holiday. My co-workers knew only that it was a day off.
In Massachusetts one time I learned about Bunker Hill Day.
My point is that there are lots of holidays people don't know about and ignorance of Juneteenth shouldn't be any big deal.
Most people in MA never heard of Bunker Hill Day.
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PRESIDENT TRUMP,
ITS TIME FOR *NATIONAL DISTANCING* FROM CHI-COM CHINA
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