WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump Eerde Juneteenthe as president in each of his first four years, even before it became a federal vacation. He even claimed that he had made it 'very famous'.
But on this year's JuneteeneNeTh Holiday on Thursday, the mostly talkative President was silent in a day important for black Americans to mark the end of slavery in the country that he leads again.
No words about his lips, on paper or through his social media site.
Asked if Trump would commemorate Juneteenthe in any way, press secretary Karoline Leavitt of the White House told reporters: “I do not follow his signature on a proclamation. I know this is a federal vacation. I want to thank you all for the appearance for work. We are certainly here. We are now working 24/7.”
Asked in a follow -up question if Trump could recognize the opportunity in a different way or on another day, Leavitt said: “I just answered that question for you.”
The silence of the Republican president was a sharp contrast with his earlier recognition of the holiday. JuneteENTH celebrates the end of slavery in the United States by commemorating 19 June 1865, when Union Soldiers brought the news of freedom to make black people slaves in Galveston, Texas. Their freedom came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln liberated slaves in the Confederation by signing the emancipation proclamation during the Civil War.
Trump's silence about the issue also devoted to the guidance of the White House that Trump intended to sign a JuneteENTH Proclamation. Leavitt did not explain the change. Trump did not hold public events on Thursday, but he shared statements about Iran, De Tiktok -App and FED chairman Jerome Powell on his social media site.
He had more to say about JuneteENTH in annual statements in his first term.
In 2017, Trump called on the “soulful festivities and emotional joy” that, by the Galveston, wiped the news by the Galveston, the news that all the people made for slave were free.
He told the Galveston story in each of the next three years. “Together we honor the unbreakable spirit and countless contributions of generations of Afro -Mamans to the story of American greatness,” he added in his 2018 statement.
In 2019: “In our country, the contributions of Afro -Marikans continue to enrich every facet of American life.” In 2020: “June reminds us of both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that emancipation must have attended. It is both a memory of a scourge of our history and a celebration of the unsurpassed capacity of our nation to triumph about darkness.”
In 2020, after suspended his campaign rallies because of the Coronavirus Pandemie, Trump Tulsa, Oklahoma, Koos as the place to resume his public meetings and planned a meeting before 19 June. But the decision met such a fierce criticism that Trump had postponed the event per day.
Black leaders had said it was offensive for Trump to opt for a campaign event on June 19 and Tulsa, given the meaning of Juneteeneent and Tulsa as the place where in 1921 a white crowd plundered and burned the Greenwood district of that city, an economically thriving area that is referred to as Black Wall Street. No fewer than 300 black Tulsans were killed and thousands were temporarily kept in internment camps under the supervision of the National Guard.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal days before the rally, Trump tried to give the situation a positive twist by claiming that he had made Juneteene a 'famous'. He said he changed the rally date out of respect for two Afro -American friends and supporters.
“I did something good. I made it famous. I made JuneteENTH very famous,” said Trump. “It is actually an important event, it is an important time. But nobody had heard of it. Very few people have heard of it.”
Generations of Black Americans celebrated JuneteENNET long before it became a federal vacation in 2021 with the battle of President Joe Biden's pen.
Later in 2020, Trump tried to pursue black voters with a series of campaign blows, including the setting up of Juneteeneth as a federal holiday.
He lost the elections, and that made it possible for Biden, a Democrat, to sign the legislation that JuneteENTH established as the latest federal vacation. Shortly after he was sworn in for his second term in January, Trump signed an executive order that put an end to diversity, shares and inclusion initiatives in the federal government and called “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
Biden published annual JuneteENTH proclamations during his four years in office and observed some of the holiday with large concerts at the South Lawn. The last observation of Biden in 2024 contained versions of Gladys Knight and Patti Labelle. Vice -President Kamala Harris danced on stage with gospel singer Kirk Franklin.
This year Biden spent vacation in Galveston, Texas, where he would speak in a historic African methodist Episcopal Church.
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Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward has contributed to this report.
