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GOP
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Suits filed by Donald Trump tend to be meritless. Suits filed against Trump? Usually a whole lot stronger. The fellow who keeps a veritable army of lawyers employed has bought himself yet another lawsuit by virtue of his loose lips. Who is his newest legal adversary? The Central Park Five.
Readers will call that Trump's first forays into politics/public policy, and one of his earliest forays into unvarnished racism, involved his efforts, in 1989-90, to secure the conviction of five Black men who were accused of assaulting and raping a white woman. The then-real estate developer took out a full page ad in The New York Times pressing not only for convictions but for all five men to be executed. Here's the ad, if you've never seen it:
As you can see, Trump was pushing for the death penalty, even though the death penalty had been abolished in New York in 1984.
During his current run for president, as with the previous two, he's looking to lock up the racist vote. The way to do that, in theory, is with dog whistles, so the racists get your meaning, but (ideally) everyone else does not. Trump doesn't do subtlety very well, however. And so, during his one and only debate against Kamala Harris, after she accused Trump of using race to divide Americans, he issued forth with this, ostensibly reminding his base that he is on top of the "troublemaking urban Black people" problem:
This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country. There's never been anything like it. They're destroying our country. And they come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor Bloomberg agreed with me on the Central Park Five. They admitted—they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty—then they pled we're not guilty.
Well, that certainly proved his point that he does not use race to divide people!
In any event, here's the problem. The Five never pleaded guilty, the victim of the attack was not killed, and ultimately all of the Five were exonerated. So, Trump's "facts" are pretty much 100% wrong. And, in view of the Five (and their lawyers), defamatory. So, the quintet sued yesterday.
Trump has most certainly left himself exposed here. The Five have been trying to move past this for close to 40 years, and can absolutely say they were damaged by a major-party presidential candidate going on national TV and reciting a false narrative of events. Trump can hardly claim he did not know the truth, given the interest he took in the case. We suppose he could claim he is unable to remember the details; that would reflect badly on him in a different manner.
Although we have no doubt that the Five absolutely feel damaged, and absolutely want to be made whole, we would guess that their filing right now, as opposed to waiting until after, say, November 5, is not a coincidence. They, quite reasonably, loathe Trump, and certainly don't want to see him in the Oval Office again. We don't know if this will make a dent, but we do know that both parties are fighting tooth and nail for Black men right now. Certainly, a reminder of Trump's comfort with scapegoating Black defendants isn't going to help him with Black men. (Z)