The announcement of the rally
sparked an uproar earlier this week because of Tulsa's history as the site of one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the nation's history:
the 1921 massacre of hundreds of African Americans who were attacked by a white mob that looted and burned many black-owned businesses and homes in the Greenwood District, a neighborhood that was then known as "Black Wall Street."
Holding a rally on that day was viewed as yet another affront by Trump, who has so far refused to engage in any meaningful way in the profound conversation about systematic racism unfolding in this country.
After weeks of divisive rhetoric and demands for the nation's governors to "dominate" the protesters in the streets with military force if necessary, Trump's Twitter announcement Friday night fell short of an apology but marked a notable shift in tone.
Trump's retreat followed several weeks in which he has failed to rise to a moment of profound cultural change in America. While he has held several roundtables with African American leaders following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis, his instinct has been to ignore the national reckoning over race rather than lead it.
His message has instead centered on the need for "law and order" and his bizarre assertion in Dallas this week that the problems of bigotry and prejudice in America can be resolved "quickly" and "very easily."
And instead of using this pivotal moment to expand his outreach -- an imperative for his reelection campaign as his rival Joe Biden widens his lead in national polls -- Trump has traveled to comfortable venues in states that are largely not in play in November.
That puzzling strategy comes after several months in which Trump was largely contained at the White House because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now he is increasingly restless, yearning to fill arenas with supporters for the rallies he believes were critical in carrying him to victory in 2016. But at a time when Biden is barely traveling, Trump's plans continue to be constrained by the slow re-opening of several of the most critical swing states led by Democratic governors.
A glance at the President's travel calendar shows few signs of a concerted effort to persuade the voters he will need to help him win reelection. At a roundtable with African American leaders at the White House Wednesday, Trump said he planned to visit Florida, North Carolina and Arizona -- three of the
six target states that will likely be most decisive in determining the outcome of the election, according to CNN's "Road to 270" analysis
. But it is unclear when those plans will materialize, particularly as coronavirus cases rise at an alarming rate in Arizona.
So far, in his first forays outside the White House, Trump has mainly traveled to venues that offer a cocoon of political safety rather than a chance to engage and persuade undecided voters as
the nation debates police reform after Floyd's death.
On Thursday night, the President retreated to his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, a solid blue state. On Saturday, he will deliver a socially distanced commencement speech to the graduating class of the US Military Academy at West Point, amid controversy over his relentless drive to involve the military in efforts to corral protesters.
Earlier Thursday, he traveled to Texas, a state he won by 9 points in 2016, for a campaign fundraiser and a roundtable focused on "justice disparities" in Dallas, where he said Americans need to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice but
cautioned that the US will make no progress on that front "by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots."
Three of the most prominent black law enforcement officials -- the region's police chief, sheriff and district attorney -- were not invited to participate.
"When you initiate a conversation and you purport that conversation to be about racism and policing in America, and you fail to include the top three law enforcement officials in an area where you are speaking -- I think that that says a lot, and that causes one to raise the brow," Dallas County Sheriff
Marian Brown told CNN's Erin Burnett.
A week earlier, in the midst of heated protests over racism and police brutality,
Trump traveled to Maine, one of the whitest states in the country, where he scarcely addressed the controversy surrounding Floyd's death while speaking to workers at a company that manufactures coronavirus testing swabs.
Though Maine is a swing state that Trump lost in 2016, he visited Maine's largely rural 2nd Congressional District, which he won by a 10-point margin in 2016 over Hillary Clinton. His attempt at broader outreach in Maine amounted to a few lines at the end of his speech asking his audience to help get him voters in the state's 1st Congressional District,
which he lost.
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