Five black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully convicted of brutally raping a woman jogging in Central Park in 1989. Yusef Salaam, now a candidate for New York City Council, was 15 when Donald J. Trump demanded his execution for a wrongfully convicted crime.
Trump went as far as to take out a full-page ad in four of the city’s newspapers that cost a whopping $85,000 to call for the boys to be executed.
“Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” the ad read above signature, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”
“He was the firestarter,” Salaam told The Guardian of Trump, in his first extended interview just after Trump announced his run for the Presidency. “Common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty.”
“I knew that this famous person calling for us to die was very serious,” he recalled to the outlet. “We were all afraid. Our families were afraid. Our loved ones were afraid. For us to walk around as if we had a target on our backs, that’s how things were.”
Once Trump was in the White House, he refused to apologize.
Well, now that Trump is indicted, facing 34 charges, Dr. Salaam responded: “KARMA.”
Karma, indeed. And more is coming.
