Tempers rise in Oklahoma on eve of Trump event
TULSA, Okla. — A gathering of supporters of President Trump grew larger Friday and verbally clashed with opponents of the president outside a 19,000seat arena in the city’s downtown where he plans to speak this weekend.
Trump’s rally Saturday night in a city with a long history of racial tension will be held just blocks from the site of one of the worst racial massacres in U.S. history and comes as the number of coronavirus cases in the state has spiked in recent days.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday rejected a petition to require everyone attending Trump’s rally to wear a face mask and maintain social distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.
The court ruled that the two local residents who asked that the thousands expected at the rally be required to take the precautions couldn’t establish that they had a legal right to the relief they sought.
On Friday, while city workers erected a metal fence to barricade the Trump rally site, tempers flared as several black Tulsans walked up to a corner where Trump supporters were bellowing religious messages through bullhorns.
Abrienne Smith squared off with Trump supporters, talking about killings of African Americans. When a reporter asked why she decided to come to the Trump rally site, Smith said: “Because I have a black son. I am worried about him. He’s 4. I am scared for his life because of stuff like this,” while pointing at the Trump supporters.
Tulsa’s Republican mayor, G.T. Bynum, rescinded a dayold curfew he had imposed for the area around the arena ahead of the rally. The curfew took effect Thursday night and was supposed to remain until Sunday morning. But Trump tweeted Friday that he had spoken to Bynum and that the mayor told him he would rescind it.
Bynum said he got rid of the curfew at the request of the U.S. Secret Service. In his executive order establishing the curfew, Bynum said he was doing so at the request of law enforcement who had intelligence that “individuals from organized groups who have been involved in destructive and violent behavior in other States are planning to travel to the City of Tulsa for purposes of causing unrest in and around the rally.“
Bynum didn’t elaborate as to which groups he meant. Although Trump has characterized those who have clashed with law enforcement after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis as radicalleft “thugs,” an Associated Press analysis found that the vast majority of people arrested during recent protests in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., were locals.
Trump on Friday morning tweeted: “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!”