President Donald Trump will soon hold another campaign rally following a long break from the campaign trail due to the Coronavirus — and his team is making attendees agree not to hold the Trump team liable for any Coronavirus illnesses that they contract while on the premises. Although some mitigation efforts have been wound back as the months of the Coronavirus onslaught have ground on, the virus still remains a very real threat, and big events like campaign rallies have the potential to turn into something like an incubation chamber for a sudden massive spread of the virus. On Twitter this Friday, Hillary Clinton called out Trump for putting Americans’ health and safety on the line.
For a month, Trump has bellowed America is back, business needs to open, it's OK it's safe, wear a mask (or don't, like me). Now his campaign tells those signing up to a rally, they have to sign a waiver not to sue. Hypocrisy so brazen, it borders on something else. You choose.
— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) June 12, 2020
She bluntly observed:
‘If your rallies come with a liability waiver, you shouldn’t be holding them.’
If your rallies come with a liability waiver, you shouldn’t be holding them. https://t.co/J1BgdUec9k
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2020
Indeed — there is still a very real danger to holding a huge event like a campaign rally. While the event could be fine and free from the Coronavirus, if the virus is present in even just one or a few people, then untold thousands could suddenly be exposed to the virus all at once. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has not yet returned to the campaign trail; most recently, he’s been sticking to appearances at smaller-scale events.
So. Let's set the stage…
President Trump has chosen as the venue for his first rally in months, Tulsa, Oklahoma, site of a horrific massacre of African Americans. And he has set the date for June 19th, Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery in the United States.— Dan Rather (@DanRather) June 10, 2020
Meanwhile, there’s another major issue with Trump’s upcoming rally. It’s planned for Tulsa, Oklahoma, which besides its rather solidly Republican-leaning status, was the site of a violent attack on the local black community in 1921. In the incident, which has been deemed the Tulsa race massacre, at least dozens of people were murdered and hundreds were injured when the local white community violently attacked a predominately black area of the city. Trump’s rally in Tulsa is planned for June 19th, which is the date of “Juneteenth,” a traditional observance marking the end of slavery in the United States. Although Trump himself may not be aware of the convergence, someone on his team may want to turn Juneteenth’s reminder of the end of slavery into a reminder of racist violence like that which was inflicted in Tulsa.
The Trump rally will occur on Juneteenth Day, when many Americans commemorate the end of slavery, in a city that was home to an infamous 1921 massacre of Black people, one of the worst racial atrocities in the nation’s history. https://t.co/3NgPHpuEc2
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 10, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response to Clinton below:
