Central Park Five's Yusef Salaam: Donald Trump Needs to Be Fired from Running for President | Democracy Now!
In 1989, Yusef Salaam and four other African-American and Latino teenagers were arrested for beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. They became known as the Central Park Five. Donald Trump took out full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for their execution. Then, in 2002, their convictions were vacated after the real rapist came forward and confessed to the crime and his DNA matched. By then, the Central Park Five served between seven and 13 years in jail for the assault. The city settled with them for $41 million. But as late as last week Donald Trump still claimed they were guilty. We speak with Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, who writes in The Washington Post that "Donald Trump won’t leave me alone."
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer to The Central Park Five documentary. In 2014, the City of New York agreed to pay $41 million to the five men wrongfully convicted.
As for Donald Trump, he’s never apologized. In fact, he still claims they were guilty. In a statement to CNN last week, Donald Trump said, quote, "They admitted they were guilty. The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same," he said.
Well, we are going now to Atlanta to speak with Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five. His recent piece for The Washington Post is headlined "I’m one of the Central Park Five. Donald Trump won’t leave me alone."
Yusef, thanks so much for joining us on Democracy Now! Donald Trump, as early as last Thursday, continues to say that you are guilty. What do you say to him?
YUSEF SALAAM: You know, first, thanks for having me on your show.
Donald Trump has the absolute, ultimate ability to fact-check everything about this case. I mean, in the trailer, one of the things that’s really surprising is that you have one of the jurors saying, you know, he was going crazy, there was no evidence, no blood on the guys, but they confessed, and so that was that, you know. But when you look at the nature of the confessions, when you look at the nature of what happened to get the confessions, how these confessions didn’t match anything that the other guys were saying, you know, and then all of a sudden, 13 years later, the truth comes out, and here you have a guy who talks about what happened at the crime scene, talks about when he struck the woman over the head with a tree branch, talks about dragging her into the woods—and key evidence that no one else had mentioned is that she was tied up with here own jogging outfit—you know, Donald Trump has the ability to look at all of this stuff and to put the truth out there.
But I think that it’s more attractive to him to be divisive, to be negative. He’s calling it a positive thing that he did back in 1989. I mean, we’re talking about—this crime happened April 19, 1989. On May 1st, Donald Trump had already taken out the ads. It was being ran in New York City’s newspapers, calling for the death penalty to be reinstated. What was happening was that we were given a social death. We were being tried in the media, and they were getting ready to lynch us, in public and through the court system. You know, if I had a show, I would tell Donald Trump he was fired. All of the things that he’s exhibiting today is very, very disturbing. Nobody who is seeking presidency should even have any kind of shady, dark past like Donald Trump. He’s definitely not the man for these United States of America.
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