Don loves ‘loser’
S.C. pol rips prez for ‘glorifying’ slaver Lee
South Carolina lawmaker and House Majority Whip James Clyburn took issue Sunday with President Trump’s claim that Robert E. Lee was a “great general,” pointing out that the slaveowning Confederate leader was on the losing side of a war that sought to divide the nation.
“The fact of the matter is, Robert E. Lee was a great tactician, was not a great person,” the 78-year-old Southern Democrat said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Robert E. Lee was a slave owner and a brutal slave master. Thankfully, he lost that war, and I find it kind of interesting the president is now glorifying a loser. He always said that he hated losers. Robert E. Lee was a loser.”
Throughout the week, Trump has tried to walk back his 2017 comments in which he called Nazi sympathizers “fine people” in the aftermath of the Charlottesville Unite the Right race riots. Trump has since claimed those protesters, including white supremacists carrying torches through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us,” were part of a movement to oppose the removal of Civil War statues in the South.
ABC host George Stephanopoulos played a clip from a speech in which the president attempted to clarify. “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general. Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals.”
Clyburn’s condemnation of Lee and Trump came during a discussion about Saturday’s fatal shooting at a California synagogue and hate speech in America.
“Even if you could get beyond that at the end of the Civil War Robert E. Lee asked all of his comrades to lay down their guns and to furl those Confederate flags, and if my memory serves — put them in your attics,” Clyburn said. “If the president is going to glorify Robert E. Lee, let’s at least be consistent about it.”
Clyburn said the next battle will be in accordance with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that Trump may have obstructed justice during the investigation into 2016 election meddling.
“We have six committees who are looking at this president and looking at his past activities: Ways and Means trying to get to his tax records; we’ve got Financial Services looking at his relationships with banks around the country; we’ve got Government Ops looking at his activities as it relates to the oversight responsibilities they have … Judicial Committee looking at the ways to proceed on getting people before their committee that can testify and help us build a record,” said Clyburn, calling it a “route toward impeachment. It’s something else to lay a foundation, gather the facts, educate the American people so that we can see exactly what needs to be done and when we should do it.”