Long before he became a President who pushed for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., and railed against Caribbean and African immigrants from “s–thole countries,” Donald Trump called for a return of the death penalty after a group of black and Hispanic teens were arrested and charged in a sexual assault that shocked the city.
Trump spewed his hate — his word — in a full page ad that ran in four New York City newspapers, including the Daily News, after the 1989 arrests of five youths accused of raping and beating a jogger in Central Park.
“BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE,” the ad screamed in capital letters.
Below it, Trump groused about the loss of civility, and the need for someone to pay.
“What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society and the police for those who break the law, who want only trespass on the rights of others?” Trump wanted to know.
“I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer, and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”
The defendants, Kharey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam, all had their convictions overturned in 2002 after a prison inmate, Matias Reyes, said he was the one who raped the jogger, and DNA evidence backed his confession.
But even after the Central Park Five were awarded a $41 million settlement from the city in 2014, Trump defiantly refused to back away from the substance of his divisive ad.
He called the settlement “a disgrace,” and “the heist of the century.”
In the ad, and in subsequent interviews, Trump denounced cries of police brutality, and set the tone for the racial backlash he receives even today.
