- The week leading up to President Donald
Trump 's first post-COVID campaignrally has been filled with defeats that could be a roadblock to his reelection campaign. - Trump has been criticized for his handling of the
coronavirus pandemic and recent protests over police brutality and racial injustice. - The
Supreme Court also reversed his efforts to diminish protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
President Donald Trump will reboot his campaign rallies, after they were paused due to the coronavirus pandemic, on Saturday in Tulsa. But while the event is being billed as a celebration, the week leading up to the gathering has been filled with multiple defeats for the president on issues that could affect his re-election campaign.
Last week, Trump announced that the rally would have been held in Tulsa on June 19.
Some quickly pointed out the rally would be held on Juneteenth — a holiday to celebrate the end of slavery that is commemorated by Black Americans as an independence day — in a city where a race massacre took place 99 years ago.
Trump later postponed it to June 20 because "many African American friends and supporters have reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date," he tweeted.
Despite the date change, the week leading up to his rally has been filled with concern over the likelihood that the rally would be a super-spreading coronavirus event, damning excerpts from John Bolton's memoir, and a Supreme Court decision that protects dreamers apart of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from deportation.
Concerns over the rally
The rally itself has garnered criticism. Many experts are worried that it could a super-spreading event, where a small number of people could infect a lot more.
As many as 800 Oklahoma healthcare professionals signed a letter urging the mayor of Tulsa to cancel the rally.
"Allowing our city to be one of the first places in the world to host an indoor gathering of this magnitude is not a political matter, it is a public health matter," the letter said. "As our city and state COVID-19 numbers climb at a rate previously unseen, it is unthinkable that this is seen as a logical choice."
The rally would be held in the BOK Center, an indoor venue that seats more than 19,000 people. However, indoor venues allow for the easier spread of the coronavirus, especially as people talk loudly, congregate for hours, and don't wear masks. Oklahoma is already seeing an increase in cases.
Attendees were required to sign a waiver to not fault the Trump campaign or the BOK Center if they do contract COVID-19.
Additionally, there's concern that attendees could further spread the virus across state lines since many are coming in from other states.
"People going to the rally are endangering not just themselves but everyone they contact in the one to two weeks afterward," Marm Kilpatrick, a disease ecologist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Business Insider.
Protests over police brutality
As Trump heads into his rally, protests are ongoing after the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes, in Minnesota last month.
Beyond, criticism of Trump being insensitive when he initially planned his Tulsa rally on Juneteenth in a city where a race massacre took place, many have long criticized the president's handling of the protests and accused him of perpetuating racial divides.
Earlier this month, Business Insider reported that Trump's administration was dismissive of systemic racism.
President Donald Trump shushed a Black reporter, PBS correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, when she asked about his plans to address systemic racism in the US.
Several members of his administration have also been dismissive of the topic that many people have taken to the streets to protests against.
"No, I don't think there's systemic racism," national security adviser Robert O'Brien recently told CNN. "I think 99.9% of our law enforcement officers are great Americans. Many of them are African American, Hispanic, Asian."
Supreme Court rules against Trump on DACA
On Thursday, Trump was dealt another blow. The Supreme Court ruled on that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields 700,000 young immigrants from deportation will remain intact.
The ruling goes against Trump's efforts to end it.
In 2016, Trump campaigned on a promise to "immediately terminate" DACA. He tried to eliminate the program in 2017 but was blocked by several lower courts from fully ending it, Business Insider reported.
The program allows children who were brought to the US as children to have quasi-legal status. Although they are not considered authorized immigrants, they are offered temporary protection from deportation and given two-year, renewable work permits.
"Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" Trump tweeted after the decision.
This follows another ruling where the Supreme Court said that the 1963 Civil Rights Act extends employment protections to LGBTQ employees.
The decision is contrary to efforts by the Trump Administration to roll back protections for the LGBTQ community.
ProPublica found that at least 31 measures put in place by the Obama administration to protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination were rolled back or rescinded since Trump took office in 2017.
John Bolton's memoir excerpts
Despite efforts to block former national security adviser John Bolton from publishing his memoir "The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir," excerpts from the book — that have made multiple explosive claims about Trump — were published just a few days before his rally.
Boltons book alleges that Trump on several occasions wanted to "give personal favors to dictators he liked" by offering to kill federal criminal investigations in the US into foreign companies based out of China and Turkey, and also allegedly told Trump told China's President Xi Jinping that Americans wanted him to be able to serve more than two terms as president.
The Trump administration sued to prevent the book from being published, and an emergency hearing has been scheduled for Friday. Legal experts have said that the Trump administration's effort to sue Bolton to prevent him from releasing the book under claims that he's releasing confidential information won't hold up.
The book is set to be released on June 23.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden leading in polls
Several elections polls have shown that Trump's presidential opponent former Vice President Joe Biden is in the lead.
A new Fox News poll saw that if voters had to choose a candidate today, Biden would beat Trump 50% to 38%.
The poll also showed that Biden has been able to widen his lead against Trump. Another Fox
That poll showed that some of the top concerns for voters were