Washington: US President Donald Trump announced that his first election rally in months will be held on June 20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, instead of June 19, after activists and members of the Democratic opposition criticized him for what they called a nod to white supremacists.
Taking to Twitter on Friday, Trump announced that he had decided to postpone the event one day because June 19 commemorates the abolition of slavery in the US, reports Efe news.
“Many of my African American friends and other supporters had contacted us to propose that we consider changing the date out of respect for that holiday and all that it stands for.
“Therefore, I have decided to change our meeting to Saturday, June 20, to honour their requests,” said Trump.
Then the President assured that 200,000 people have already asked to attend the meeting and added: “I am looking forward to seeing everyone in Oklahoma!”
Democratic opposition lawmakers and activists from the “Black Lives Matter” movement had harshly criticized Trump’s decision to hold his first rally on June 19, when the end of slavery is commemorated.
Specifically, they had criticized that the event was that day and, in addition, in Tulsa, a city that in 1921 was the scene of a brutal massacre in which up to 300 African-Americans died at the hands of white groups.
One of the voices that has criticized Trump the most has been the African-American senator Kamala Harris, who is being considered as a possible candidate for the Vice Presidency as a running mate of the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“This,” Harris said this week, “is not a nod to white supremacists. He’s throwing them a welcome party.”
The Tulsa election rally will come amid a wave of outrage in the US. for the death of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Floyd, a symbol of the desire for change, died on May 25 after dying for nine minutes, prostrated on the ground and while a white agent pressed his knee against his neck, a scene recorded on video and sparked protests in hundreds of cities.
Trump held his last rally on March 2 and thereafter had to suspend all his electoral acts due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 114,000 dead and 2 million people infected in the US.
According to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University, several states that had barely suffered the impact of the pandemic are now experiencing high infection rates.
Three of those states are Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina, where Trump plans to hold other election rallies in the coming weeks.
Neither Trump nor his campaign have explained what protection measures will be taken to prevent the spread of the virus during those electoral acts, which bring together large crowds.
The US presidential election will be held on November 3.
In recent weeks, Biden has risen in the polls and, right now, he would get 49 per cent of the votes compared to 41 per cent of Trump, according to the average of polls prepared by the website Real Clear Politics.
