PAPER TRAIL

‘Central Park 5’ Exoneree Celebrates Trump Arrest in Cheeky Newspaper Ad

“You were wrong then, and you are wrong now,” the ad read in part, referencing Trump’s previous calls for the Central Park 5 to be executed.

Yusef Salaam, an exoneree from the “Central Park 5,” expertly trolled Donald Trump in a newspaper ad this week—hitting at the former president using the same medium Trump once used to call for his execution in 1989. The full-page advert ran in the New York Times on Wednesday, detailing how Trump once paid $85,000 to take out newspaper ads to call for the execution of him and four others who were wrongly accused of raping and beating a white jogger in Central Park—a crime they were eventually exonerated for. Salaam wrote that Trump never apologized for taking out the ads, but, despite his own injustices, said he hopes the former president receives a fair trial for the slew of charges he faces in Manhattan Criminal Court. Salaam wrote that he’s putting his “faith in the justice system,” and he hopes that Trump receives “what the Exonerated 5 did not get—a presumption of innocence, and a fair trial.”