Donald Trump will not admit he was wrong about the Central Park Jogger case.
In 1989, the real estate mogul took out full page newspaper ads calling for the execution of the Central Park Five—a group of black and brown teenagers who were wrongly convicted of rape and assault. The suspects—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., and Korey Wise—were finally exonerated in 2002, when DNA evidence linked the crime to a serial rapist. Though the men eventually received a $41 million settlement for the wrongful convictions, Trump has yet to issue an apology.
Weeks after the case was depicted in Ava DuVernay's Netflix miniseries When They See Us, Trump doubled down on his controversial stance, suggesting the five men were not innocent.
"Why do you bring that question up now?" Trump asked a reporter, when questioned about the case. "It’s an interesting time to bring it up. You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt. If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case. So, we’ll leave it at that."
Like many of us, DuVernay isn't shocked by the president's comments.
The writer/producer responded to Trump's remarks following a Women in Entertainment and Writers Guild of America West screening of When They See Us, her dramatized look at the events surrounding the case.
"It’s expected," she told the Los Angeles Times. "There’s nothing he says or does in relation to this case or the lives of black people or people of color that has any weight to it. It’s not our reality, there’s no truth to it. I wish I had a more juicy sound bite, but I don’t care."
On Tuesday night, DuVernay posted a clip from the series that features an old Trump interview in which he says he "would love to be a well-educated black." The scene briefly references Trump's newspaper ads against the innocent teens.
