Mediaboss Marketing

Leading Democrats on Sunday morning talk shows defended moves by local governments to remove monuments of Confederate leaders, saying that the unrest in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 showed that the statues had become rallying points for white supremacists instead of educational tools about the nations history.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said President Trump got this wrong when he expressed opposition to taking down commemorations to Confederate leaders. People dont need monuments to learn history, Cardin said on Fox News Sunday.

You dont need a monument offensive to certain parts of our history being glorified in order to appreciate history, Cardin told host Bill Hemmer.

Cardin said he supports actions this past week in Baltimore and Annapolis to remove statues of Confederate leaders. I think what Baltimore and Annapolis are doing is appropriate, Cardin said.

Jeh Johnson, homeland security secretary under President Barack Obama, said that the monuments had become rallying points for white supremacists.

I salute people taking down these monuments as a matter of public safety, Johnson said in an interview on ABCs This Week.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (D) said on the same program that he had changed his mind about the presence of Civil War monuments to Confederate leaders. As mayor of the city that served as the Confederate capital, Stoney, who is black, said that he once thought the monuments could be tools to teach and enlighten people but that now he also sees them as rallying points.

This is what happens when we turn history into nostalgia, said Christy Coleman, head of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond.

Stoney also took issue with Trumps comparison of statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson to Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Though all were slave owners, Stoney said that Washington and Jefferson did not take up arms against the United States of America.

I appreciate the presidents opinion, Stoney said. But in Richmond I dont think that matters. We live here.

Trump provoked outcry from business leaders, Democrats and Republicans, and military leaders by failing to strongly condemn white supremacists and Nazis marching in Charlottesville. He said that both sides were to blame for violence there, which took the life of one woman. Further demonstrations took place Saturday in Boston, where white supremacists were vastly outnumbered.

Former congressman J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) urged congressional leaders to speak out against Trumps comments if they disagreed with them.

This is not a time for us to be afraid of being tweeted, Watts said on NBCs Meet the Press. This is not a time for us to suppress our convictions.

If theyre silent, they wear the cap ... saying we agree with that, Watts added.

Trump compromised his moral authority by insisting multiple times there was hatred and violence on both sides in last weekends Charlottesville attacks, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Sunday on CBSs Face the Nation.

Scott praised Trumps speech Aug. 14, in which the president condemned the white supremacists that attacked a crowd of counterprotesters although the South Carolina senator said Trump should have delivered it directly after the attack instead of waiting two days.

But Scott said things then soured Tuesday, when Trump doubled down on his prior remarks that there was violence on both sides.

His comments on Tuesday started to compromise that moral authority we need the president to have for this nation to be the beacon of light to all mankind, Scott said.

But Scott didnt express clear support for removing monuments to Confederate leaders. I think thats definitely a local issue, he said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) suggested his state could do better in Capitol Hills Statuary Hall, where each state is allowed to place two statues. Virginias two statues are of George Washington and Lee. Kaine suggested the state could replace Lee and choose from a list of candidates, including Pocahontas or Virginias first African American governor, L. Douglas Wilder.

From 2017 looking backward, I think Virginia could probably do better in the two people we chose to stand for us in Statuary Hall, Kaine said.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNNs State of the Union that Trumps response to Charlottesville was inadequate.

You know, the real challenge, I think, and job for the chief executive, in a country where race has always been such a difficult conversation, is to do everything possible to bring our country together, to help make us a more perfect union, Schiff said. And what the president did this week was as if he stood on a line dividing the country and pushed to separate one America from another with all his might. And that is not what this country needs.

Asked if Trump should apologize for his remarks, as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) has urged, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) demurred, saying in some ways were looking backward.

Where I want to look now is what are we going to do to deal with the fundamental issues we have in the country? The issue of race. Theissue of police and community coming together and developing policing methods that can unify, Kasich said.

Asked why Trump has difficulty condemning white supremacists, Kasich said he was heartened by Trumps response to the dueling rallies in Boston on Saturday. A rally by white supremacists there was overwhelmed by tens of thousands of people protesting against them.

My understanding is the president came out and praised people, praised the police, praised the fact that the radicals were really marginalized, and that those who marched against hate, he praised, Kasich said. I feel positive about what he had to say about Boston from what I understand in the news reports.

Kasich played down reports that he is moving closer to mounting a primary challenge to Trump in 2020, saying that hes rooting for him to get it together.

Scott urged Trump to spend time with people who lived through the civil rights era if he wants to be able to speak with moral authority about racial issues.

We need the president to sit down with folks who have a personal experience if the president wants to have a better understanding and appreciation for what he should do next, Scott said. Without that personal connection to the painful past, it will be hard for him to regain that authority, from my perspective.

NBCs Meet the Press turned to one of the people who lived through the civil rights era, former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who said that the past week had been a week of misunderstandings.

Young said that most of the issues that were dealing with now are related to poverty, but we still want to put everything in a racial contest, he said.

The reason I feel uncomfortable condemning the Klan types is theyre almost the poorest of the poor. Theyre the forgotten Americans. They have been used, abused and neglected. Instead of giving them affordable health care, they give them black lung jobs.

He added: They see progress in the black community and everywhere else and they dont share it.

Host Chuck Todd said that no one from the Trump administration would agree to come on the show to talk about Charlottesville.

Read more here:
Democrats say Confederate monuments are now white-supremacist rallying points - Washington Post