Yusef Salaam Explains Why He Called Trump’s Indictment “Karma”

Thirty-five years ago today, a white woman was brutally raped and assaulted while jogging in Central Park. New York Police officers swiftly rounded up a dozen of teenagers and young men. And in the aftermath of the mass arrest, five Black and Latino teenage boys — Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana Jr., Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, and Antron McCray, were charged and convicted of the crime.

The Central Park 5, as they came to be known, would eventually be exonerated. But in 1989, they were just a group of scared teenagers, and one of the most powerful men in New York City wanted them dead.

“Bring Back The Death Penalty” read the advertisement taken out by then-real estate mogul Donald Trump in big, bold, black lettering.

There was nothing abstract about that statement. Trump wanted Salaam and the four other boys accused of the Central Park rape dead. And he was willing to use his considerable wealth to do it.

The Root sat down Salaam for an episode of our digital politics show The 411, to discuss Trump, his election, and the state of criminal justice reform.

Today, Salaam is a New York City Council member representing Harlem. When The Root interviewed Salaam, Trump was in the midst of his New York City fraud trial, which he eventually lost. He was also facing a criminal trial in New York and the three other criminal trials in other parts of the country.

“I had the opportunity while campaigning to tweet just one word: ‘Karma,’” said Salaam referencing the iconic tweet he sent after Trump’s first indictment. “It got retweeted so many times. It was like wildfire.”

The rush to judgment in Salaam’s case was jarring. He and the four other members of the Exonerated 5, formerly known as The Central Park 5—weren’t even convicted when the calls for their death began.

“That ad...was published two weeks after we were accused,” he says. “It wasn’t created two weeks after we were accused. It was in the works massaged and green-lit two weeks after we were accused. ‘Bring back the death penalty’ was the first words that were read.”

Trump was trying to get the same evil forces “to do to us what was done to Emmett Till,” says Salaam.

The criminal justice system failed in Salaam’s case. “I wanted the system to work for me,” he says. “I wanted them to say hold on, we don’t have any DNA evidence. We don’t have any blood. We don’t have nothing. We have four false statements that don’t match anything. And we’re going to play one of the statements at Yusef’s trial because he didn’t say anything that was captured on tape or on paper. And they damned us all for it.”

But in Trump’s case, he hopes the system manages to hold the right person accountable. “Karma is real,” says Salaam.