Two members of the “Central Park Five” slammed President Trump Wednesday for claiming he wanted the facts before denouncing the white supremacist groups that rallied in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.
“I think it’s despicable and deplorable for him to, at this point in the game, to say, you know what, I wanted to wait for the facts,” Yusef Abdus Salaam told CNN.
Salaam and four other black and Hispanic teenagers were wrongly accused of beating and raping Trisha Meili in Manhattan’s Central Park in 1989, serving between six and 13 years in jail for a crime they did not commit.
With the racially-charged case receiving national attention, Trump took out full-page advertisements in four New York newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty and that those responsible should be “forced to suffer” regardless of their age.
“This ad that he took out in relationship with the Central Park jogger case was taken out on May 1 of 1989. This crime happened April 19,” Salaam continued. “There was a rush to judgment and it was a stoking of the fire. In a similar way, him saying that this group and this group were both equally wrong caused the death of a young woman. Horrible and horrific.”
Trump was criticized on Tuesday for not immediately singling out the white nationalist groups behind the violence in Charlottesville because he wanted to know all of the facts before making a statement.
Raymond Santana, another Central Park Five member, said people were looking to Democrats and other Republicans to condemn racism and “calm the situation down.”
“They’re supposed to take that step forward if the president can’t do it,” Santana said. “This is why they’re there.”
