During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump doubled down on one of his most notoriously racist stunts, seemingly defending his decision to run advertisements calling for a group of five Black and Latino teenagers to be executed.
Instead of apologizing to the wrongly convicted teenagers, who are now grown men, Trump used the spotlight afforded him to call them guilty all over again.
“They admitted — they said, they pled guilty,” Trump said, responding to a remark from Vice President Kamala Harris about his actions.
“And I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately, and if they pled guilty,’” he concluded.
One of the exonerated men, Yusef Salaam, approached Trump after the debate when the former president made an unexpected appearance in the spin room.
“That’s good, you’re on my side!” Trump exclaimed when he saw Salaam, smiling and pointing at him.
Salaam, now a New York City Council member, retorted: “No, no, I’m not on your side!”
Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton is joined onstage by members of the “Central Park Five,” activist Kevin Richardson, New York City Council member Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, and Raymond Santana on the fourth and last day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 22, 2024.
SAUL LOEB via Getty Images
Known at the time as the “Central Park Five,” the five teens were wrongfully accused of raping a jogger in New York City in 1989. Trump spent $85,000 on a full-page ad in The New York Times reading, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY, BRING BACK OUR POLICE.”
The boys, who were all between the ages of 14 and 16, spent between five and 12 years wrongfully imprisoned until a serial rapist confessed to the crime ― and DNA confirmed that he had committed it.
Four of the now-adult men — who are now also known as the “Exonerated Five” — appeared onstage at the Democratic National Convention last month and reminded the audience that Trump still somehow stands by the original verdict.
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“Today, we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed, and DNA proved it,” Salaam told the crowd.
“He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong. He has never changed, and he never will. That man thinks that hate is the animating force in America. It is not.”
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