In a Time of Racial Unrest and In a Pandemic, Trump Plans Return to His Rallies at Worst Possible Place and Time

WASHINGTON — President Trump, who has been eager to get back on the campaign trail, said Wednesday that he would hold his first rally in more than three months on June 19 in Tulsa, Okla., raising the risk of spreading the coronavirus in a mass gathering. 

He said he also would stage rallies soon in Florida, Arizona and North Carolina, states that he won in 2016 but where polls show his support has faltered. Trump held his last major rally on March 2 in Charlotte, N.C., but then suspended his raucous gatherings as much of the country shut down to blunt the fast-spreading coronavirus contagion. 

Oklahoma has reported 7,480 coronavirus cases as of Wednesday and 355 deaths, with five deaths in the most recent 24 hours. The numbers are relatively small but have been increasing. Trump’s campaign did not immediately say what, if any, social distancing precautions it would take to protect his supporters from the virus. 

Trump, who has refused to wear a face mask in public, previously said that he would like to see packed arenas. “We’ve had a tremendous run at rallies,” Trump told reporters Wednesday in the White House Cabinet Room. (snip)  Public-health officials have cautioned against mass gatherings, even in states that have had lower rates of infections. “It’s much too early to let our guards down,” Dr. David Satcher, a former surgeon general and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview. “This is a very dangerous pandemic.” (snip)

The Trump rally will occur on what’s known as Juneteenth Day, when many Americans commemorate the end of slavery, in a city that was home to an infamous 1921 massacre of Black people, one of the worst racial atrocities in the nation’s history.