‘Understandable’: LA Times mistakenly claims Trump served O.J.’s prison term
A major newspaper mixed up Donald Trump's name for O.J. Simpson's in an obituary for the NFL star-turned-accused murderer.
The Los Angeles Times used the former president's name in a prewritten obituary, which media outlets typically have at the ready for celebrities, political figures and other noteworthy individuals, instead of using Simpson's name in a published version that was quickly corrected.
"Long before the city woke up on a fall morning in 2017, Trump walked out of Lovelock Correctional Center outside Reno, a free man for the first time in nine years," the obituary initially read upon publication. "He didn’t go far, moving into a 5,000-square-foot home in Las Vegas with a Bentley in the driveway."
Simpson, a star running back in the 1960s for the University of Southern California and in the 1970s for the NFL's Buffalo Bills, died at age 76 following a battle with cancer.
He was charged in the brutal 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, and although he was widely presumed to be guilty, Simpson was acquitted a year later in a trial that drew unprecedented attention and raised still-simmering questions about race and justice.
Simpson was later convicted in 2008 on armed robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy and other charges related to an ill-fated attempt to recover valuable memorabilia he claimed had been stolen from him, and he served nine years of a 33-year sentence.
Conservative attorney and prominent Trump critic George Conway said he understood the Times' mixup.
"Understandable mistake," Conway tweeted. "It can be hard to keep all these clearly guilty sociopaths straight."
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