WASHINGTON - After months off the campaign trail, President Trump will re-launch his re-election bid Saturday night before a boisterous crowd. More than 800,000 supporters registered for tickets, according to his campaign manager, writes Time magazine.

Many have been camped out outside the arena for days. Yet long before they arrived, the rally was enveloped in controversy because of the timing and location.

It’s one thing to cram 19,000 people into an indoor arena in the midst of a pandemic—without mandating the use of masks. It’s another to schedule the event for June 19, a date used to commemorate the delayed emancipation of American slaves, and to pick a location seven blocks from the site of the infamous 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Okla., when white rioters, aided by Tulsa police and the Oklahoma National Guard, looted and burned more than 1,200 black homes and businesses, killing an estimated 300 people.

Volunteers from "True Hero" hand out free face shields to Trump supporters in line for the next days rally with the President in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19, 2020.

In the midst of a national reckoning over systemic racism. Trump’s campaign selected one of the most controversial locations and dates it could have chosen. At best, holding the rally in Tulsa once again revealed the massive blind spot Trump and his aides have when it comes to race in America. At worst, it was a deliberate provocation by a campaign and a candidate that seems determined to press on the nation’s raw nerves and deepen racial divisions as a matter of strategy.