Donald Trump's birtherism isn't the only racist idea he holds against all reason. According to CNN, Trump still believes that the so-called Central Park 5 raped and beat a woman who was jogging through the park in 1989.
A few weeks after that story came out, Trump took it upon himself to stir up panic among the citizens of New York by purchasing ads in four of the city's papers. The ads called for the reinstatement of the death penalty and characterized New York as the place where "criminals roam the neighborhoods."
"BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!" his ads read.
Many writers have explored the levels of racism at play in Trump's ad buys. In an interview with CNN, Yusef Salaam, one of the members of the falsely imprisoned Central Park 5, compared his situation with Emmett Till's.
Though the real rapist has since confessed, though that confession was backed up by DNA evidence, and though the city of New York settled with the men (after 14 years in court) to the tune of $41 million, Donald Trump is holding his ground:
'They admitted they were guilty,' Trump said this week in a statement to CNN's Miguel Marquez. 'The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.'
The boys (now men) testified that their confessions at the time were coerced. And the woman told her own story in a book called I Am the Central Park Jogger, wherein she describes her long and hard road to recovery. Sure she's "not the same," she didn't let that horrific event stop her from living what the Buffalo News called "a healing and victorious life."
In that interview with CNN, Salaam says that Trump should take out a full page ad in the NYT to apologize for his previous ones.
I love that idea. Of course one newspaper apology can't make up for the years of life these men lost in prison, but it is a simple act that members of the media can glom onto and demand of Donald Trump. Until then, his stance should be brought up in every interview. It'll certainly be fair game at the Town Hall presidential debate on Sunday.
Just as birtherism dented Trump's campaign for weeks, this Central Park 5 statement could draw enough attention away from the xenophobic and sexist talking points that Trump would rather be talking about.
