When Donald Trump recently refused to apologize for calling for the execution of five wrongly convicted black and brown men, Director of “When They See Us,” Ava DuVernay said, “It’s expected.”
“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,” she said after a Women in Entertainment and Writers Guild of America West screening in Hollywood on Tuesday night. “It’s not our reality; there’s no truth to it.”
In 1989, Trump was one of the most vocal public figures to side with prosecutors in the Central Park Five case. Not only did he call for the execution of Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, but he took out ads targeting the boys in four major newspapers.
When reporters at the White House asked Trump to apologize on Tuesday and admit that the men, who had been exonerated for the rape of Trisha Meili were innocent, he stood by the comments he made nearly 30 years ago.
“You have people on both sides of that — they admitted their guilt,” he said. “If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think the city should have never settled that case. So, we’ll leave it at that.”
As an advocate and storyteller, DuVernay asserted that the five men were always innocent, which is depicted in her limited Netflix series about the case. In her opinion, the focus should be “so much more than rage-tweeting back and participating in the negativity that’s so unproductive.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, DuVernay even joked with the event moderator, Jemele Hill about Trump’s comments.
“I’m surprised it took so long, I was waiting every day to get a tweet!”
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