Watchmen Tulsa Race Massacre director: "I just really wanted to vomit" when I heard Trump was speaking in Tulsa

Los Angeles Times

Nicole Kassell filmed the Watchmen pilot's depiction of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre two years ago on the same days that they took place, May 31 and June 1. Kassell recently revisited the pilot amid the racial reckoning sparked by the George Floyd police brutality protests. "I rewatched the sequence just last week, and I think in light of everything going on and having had some distance from actually directing it, it reduced me to tears," Kassell says. "Just imagining you’re living in a country that’s at peace, and your very own neighbors and often employers attack you for no reason. People murdered and homes burned and robbed. And then was systematically also erased — it’s like a crime upon a crime. It’s just so truly incomprehensible from my point of view, and that it is not shocking or incomprehensible to (the) entire (Black) community is what you know is really coming to light right now and is so disturbing." How did she react to the news that President Trump was going to hold his first rally in months in Tulsa? (Trump rescheduled the rally from Juneteenth to Saturday out of respect for the holiday.) "Honestly, I felt nauseous," says Kassell. "I just really wanted to vomit. That quote from Kamala Harris articulated it best for me: 'This isn’t just a wink to white supremacists — he’s throwing them a welcome home party.' The level of insult … I keep hoping he’s reached the nadir of his evilness, but he hasn’t. It’s just cruel. To know it’s so calculated and deliberate, that’s what’s very disturbing and scary. I don’t want him getting credit for changing the date (from Juneteenth) by one day. You want to do the right thing, you want to show respect? You don’t hold a rally in that location."

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• Damon Lindelof thinks Trump just learned about Juneteenth this week: "This is in no way a defense of the president’s ignorance, but I think it’s highly possible that he had no idea about either of these events," he says. "I’ve only known about what happened in 1921 for a few years now, and I learned about Juneteenth from an episode of Black-ish, which I could safely assume Mr. Trump does not watch. What was disturbing is what he said (and didn’t say) once he was filled in. While I am all but certain his intention was not to raise the American consciousness, I imagine there are a lot of people who heard about Juneteenth and the massacre for the very first time because the president decided to have his rally on that specific date in that specific place. I do appreciate a good backfire."