Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden called on local elected officials who oversee Confederate monuments to remove them, suggesting that they belong in areas where they can be learned from, such as museums, and not as part of open public displays.
“I think the elected officials where those statues are have a responsibility to move. Put them in museums, get them down,” said Biden, who stressed the removals should be done through peaceful means but that people shouldn’t “be surprised if someone pulls down the statue of Jefferson Davis,” the first, and last, president of the Confederacy.
“It’s better that they do not, but it’s fundamentally different” than people trying to deface the Jefferson Memorial, said Biden.
Earlier in the press conference, the presumptive Democratic nominee said that Confederate monuments and statues were fundamentally different than monuments and statues to the Founding Fathers — such as the Jefferson Memorial — which he suggested were deserving of government protection.
“The idea of comparing whether or not George Washington owned slaves — or Thomas Jefferson owned slaves — and somebody who was in rebellion, committing treason, running trying to take down a union to keep slavery, I think there’s a distinction there,” said Biden.
According to Reuters, Biden cited the Mississippi government voting to remove the Confederate emblem on its state flag as an example of how changes should take place. Governor Tate Reeves (R), who signed the flag bill Tuesday, called the flag bill a “solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together and move on,” reports The Washington Post.
Mississippi, which voted against changing the flag in 2001, will vote on a new flag design in the November election. However, unlike the 2001 election, the flag design with the confederate emblem, which was adopted in 1894, will not be on the ballot.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order protecting federal monuments in response to reports of extremists targeting statues of the nation’s founders and other statues of historical figures across the country.
After a monument to George Washington in Manhattan was defaced with red paint earlier this week, Trump tweeted a message to the vandals responsible: “We are tracking down the two Anarchists who threw paint on the magnificent George Washington Statue in Manhattan. We have them on tape. They will be prosecuted and face 10 years in Prison based on the Monuments and Statues Act. Turn yourselves in now!”
We are tracking down the two Anarchists who threw paint on the magnificent George Washington Statue in Manhattan. We have them on tape. They will be prosecuted and face 10 years in Prison based on the Monuments and Statues Act. Turn yourselves in now!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2020
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