Trump ‘sad’ for statues’ removal
Confederacy part of history, he says
WASHINGTON — Under fire for defending white-supremacy activists, President Donald Trump said Thursday on Twitter that he was “sad” to see the United States’ history torn apart by the removal of “our beautiful statues and monuments,” echoing a popular refrain of white-supremacist groups that oppose the removal of Confederate monuments.
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” Trump posted on Twitter.
Officials in several states have called for the removal of public monuments that have become symbols of the Confederacy.
Later Thursday, Trump sent out another tweet, praising the counterterrorism tactics of Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing, who fought insurgents in the Philippines in the early 1900s.
“Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when
caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” Trump wrote.
Most historians say the episodes cited by the president — including ordering bullets dipped in the blood of pigs, which Muslims are prohibited from eating — are unproved legends.
The early-morning Twitter posts were the latest in his escalating remarks that critics contend validate white-supremacist groups that led a bloody rally over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., in which counterprotester Heather Heyer, 32, was killed.
The proposed removal of a statue of the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public park in Charlottesville spurred the demonstrations.
The tweets came the morning after his personal lawyer forwarded an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that painted Lee in glowing terms and echoed secessionist sentiment from the Civil War era.
Trump’s comments, though, run directly counter to the sentiments expressed by descendants of the same Confederate leaders he referred to. Relatives of those leaders said they don’t agree that the statues should stay up, particularly after the violence in Charlottesville.
“If it can avoid any days like this past Saturday in Charlottesville, then take them down today,” Robert E. Lee V, who is named for the Confederate general and now lives in Washington, said in an interview Thursday.
Karen Finney, another descendant of Lee’s, wrote in an essay published by The Washington Post that his legacy doesn’t “deserve to be honored or defended.”
Two men who describe themselves as great-greatgrandsons of Thomas Jonathan Jackson — better known as “Stonewall,” a nickname he picked up during the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861 — echoed the comments from Lee’s descendants. In an open letter addressing a statue honoring Jackson in Richmond, Va., the onetime capital of the Confederacy, the men said they were “ashamed of the monument” to their ancestor.
“As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue,” William Jackson Christian and Warren Edmund Christian wrote in the letter published late Wednesday by Slate. “They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display.”
On Saturday, the day of the protests, Trump did not condemn neo-Nazis or white supremacists in his public remarks about the violence, prompting criticism that his omission suggested support for the groups. An Ohio man with white-supremacist ties is accused of driving his car into a crowd, killing Heyer and injuring 19 people.
Two days later, Trump bowed to pressure and said racism was “evil” and named supremacist organizations in his follow-up remarks about Charlottesville. But on Tuesday, Trump reverted to his initial public posture and blamed “both sides” for the violence.
Trump said many of those who opposed the Charlottesville statue’s removal were good people protesting the loss of their culture, and he questioned whether taking down statues of Lee could lead to monuments of George Washington also being removed.
Most of the statues were erected in the 1890s, as Jim Crow laws were being established, and in the 1950s, during a period of Southern resistance to the civil-rights movement.
In Washington, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, called Thursday for the removal of Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol.
“The Confederate statues in the halls of Congress have always been reprehensible,” Pelosi said, putting pressure on House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to act.
“If Republicans are serious about rejecting white supremacy,” Pelosi added, “I call upon Speaker Ryan to join Democrats to remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately.”
But Corey Stewart, a Republican who has said he plans to run against Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in 2018, defended Trump’s stance on such monuments.
“The president is absolutely right,” Stewart, who was Trump’s campaign chairman in Virginia, said Thursday on CNN. “After they get done removing statues to Confederate generals because, arguably, they fought to preserve the institution of slavery, they are going right after slave owners, including the founders — Jefferson, Madison, Washington — and when you undermine the Founding Fathers, you undermine the founding documents, namely the Constitution of the United States.”
LOSING GOP SUPPORT
Yet Trump’s comments continued to erode support among many other Republicans.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump “recently has not demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation.” In comments to reporters after a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club, Corker called for “radical changes” in how the Trump White House operates.
Corker has sought to be a strong supporter of Trump’s, particularly on foreign-policy matters. But a few months ago, over reports that Trump had disclosed highly classified information to a pair of Russian diplomats in the Oval Office, Corker said the White House was “in a downward spiral.” In recent weeks, Corker had largely declined to answer questions about Trump’s tweets or other political drama, telling reporters covering Congress that he was focused instead on matters of policy.
He elected to weigh in Thursday, however. Noting that the country is polarized, Corker wrote on Facebook, “Helping inspire divisions because it generates support from your political base is not a formula for causing our nation to advance, our nation to overcome the many issues that we have to deal with right now.”
Meanwhile, more Republicans aired critiques of Trump’s response to the events in Charlottesville.
Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska tweeted, “Anything less than complete & unambiguous condemnation of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK by the POTUS is unacceptable. Period.”
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said Trump’s “moral authority is compromised.”
And as denunciations from Republicans mounted, Trump hit back.
In a Thursday tweet, Trump accused “publicity seeking” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina of falsely stating Trump’s position on the demonstrators.
Graham said Wednesday that Trump “took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency” between the marching white supremacists and the people who had been demonstrating against them.
In going after Graham, Trump suggested that the senator, who also ran for president in 2016, was still smarting from his loss to Trump in the Republican primaries.
Trump tweeted: “Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists … and people like Ms. Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can’t forget his election trouncing. The people of South Carolina will remember!”
Graham responded with a statement in which he said Trump’s handling of the Charlottesville violence was being praised by “some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our Nation — as our President — please fix this. History is watching us all.”
Also Thursday, Trump called Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona “toxic” while praising his potential primary-election opponent. Flake recently published a book that was highly critical of Trump.
Trump tweeted: “Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He’s toxic!”
Corker, in his Thursday comments, defended his Republican colleague.
Flake is “one of the finest best human beings I’ve ever met,” Corker said. He said the White House would be well served to embrace Flake because of his substance and character. Flake has a “conscience and is a real conservative,” Corker said.
Separately Thursday, the White House took the unusual step of saying National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn would not resign, in response to speculation that Cohn would do so in response to Trump’s remarks about Charlottesville.
Cohn, who funded the Cohn Jewish Student Center at Kent State University in 2009, was mortified by Trump’s comments, three people close to him said, and he has been bombarded with calls from friends asking him if he will leave.
The White House said in a statement that reports about Cohn resigning are “100 percent false.”
Information for this article was contributed by Eileen Sullivan, Maggie Haberman and Thomas Kaplan of The New York Times; by Jonathan Lemire, Darlene Superville, Julie Bykowicz, Richard Lardner and Patrick Whittle of The Associated Press; and by Damian Paletta, Renae Merle, David Nakamura, Ed O’Keefe, Mark Berman and Mike Semel of The Washington Post.