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Proving that he’s willing to go out with a “bang,” 74-year-old Donald Trump proved he’s forever the showman, staging rally and fireworks show in Mt. Rushmore over the objections of some local officials and Oglala Sioux Nation Council President Julian Bear Runner. Bear Runner objected due to risks of Covid-19 but more about Trump trampling tribal lands to stage his Fourth of July publicity stunt. Despite South Dakota becoming U.S. state Nov. 2, 1889, Bear Runner thinks that the land at Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood and surrounding Black Hills are still sacred Indian lands. Democrat National Committee [DNC] tweeted that Trump’s event was “glorifying white supremacy,” despite deleting the tweet sometime later. Doesn’t take much for the DNC to tip their hands about 2020 campaign strategy, painting Trump as a “racist,” something agreed by most black people.

When it comes to the white supremacy issues, the Democrat Party of Orange County, Calif. demanded the late iconic cowboy actor star John Wayne be removed from his 1979 namesake, John Wayne Airport for telling “Playboy Magazine” in 1971 that he believed in white supremacy, something misinterpreted in today’s atmosphere. Wayne stared in countless movies depicting the Wild West, often confronting Indians while documenting how Westward-bound pioneers faced adversity traveling in covered-wagons across the Great Plains to the largely untamed Western wilderness. Yet to Democrats looking to capitalize on recent racial unrest, fingering Wayne or Trump as a white supremacist fits the Election Year strategy. Wayne and Trump are not racists, except by today’s definition given by best-selling author Robin DiAnelelo in her 2020 book, “White Fragility,” defining anybody white as racist.

With Black Lives Matter tearing down historic statues, monuments and artifacts around the country, Trump wanted to show his reverence for Mt. Rushmore where artist Tutzon Borglum carved the busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, all now considered racists by today’s standards. Washington and Jefferson actually owned slaves, something common in Colonial America, the Antebellum South, before Lincoln’s Jan. 1,1863 Emancipation Proclamation and Civil War [April 12, 1861 to May 9, 1865 where over 1,692,000 Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives. Whatever the ebb-and-flow of U.S. history, African Americans and Native Americans are U.S. citizens, subject to the same Constitution and laws as everyone else. Calling Trump a racist for hosting a July Fourth rally and fireworks show is purely political.

Trump last hosted a large crowd at a rally June 20 in Tulsa, Okalahoma where he had far fewer attending than he wanted thanks to 55-year-old TikTok Grandma Mary Jo Laupp and her legion of teenagers that bought up all of Trump tickets and no-showed at the rally. Trump hopes he’s not embarrassed against with a smaller than advertised crowd, hoping to get 7,500 South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said vulnerable groups should stay at home because she was not enforcing mandatory face masks. “This is a recipe for disaster,” Cheryl Schreier, former superintendent of Mt. Rushmore National Monuments, saying the risks of infection and wildfires from fireworks outweigh the benefits. Trump disagrees, realizing around the country that most fireworks displays have been cancelled due to risks of coronavirus. DNC officials plan to highlight how Trump is irresponsible for hosting a rally in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis, not to mention not wearing a face-mask.

Ogalala Sioux Council President Julian Bear Runner said Trump was encroaching on sacred Indian lands. ”It’s like if he tried to go and have a fireworks display celebrating independence at the Vatican,” Bear Runner told the Washington Post. Bear Runner forgets he’s an American citizen, someone also taking the day off to celebrate a national holiday, Independence Day. To Native Americans, who represent only 2% of the U.S. population, Independence Day marks a loss of tribal identity and certainly lands stolen under President Andrew Jackson’s May 28, 1830 Removal Act, authorizing federal troops to relocate Indians to designated tribal areas in desolate parts of the Western United States. Yet Bear Runner is the first to say that Trump’s trampling on his Constitutional rights, even though he considers himself part of sovereign Indian nation called the Ogalala Sioux.

Native Americans blame the U.S. government for stealing their lands, spreading European diseases to their communities and genocidal military attacks on their populations. Bear Runner knows that celebrating Fourth of July at Mt. Rushore, a U.S. National Monument in South Dakota, is not like imposing U.S. Independence Day at the Vatican. He may think that his tribe has sovereignty over Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood and the Black Hills but he knows it’s part of South Dakota, the 40th state in the Union. DNC propagandists can call Trump Independence Day bash as a “white supremacy” rally but they know it’s rubbish. With the country reeling from cornoavirus and with most fireworks shows cancelled around the country, Trump’s trying to inject some celebration at a time of national crisis. Anything done in the country to convey national unity is a good thing whatever the risks.