The chairman of the Southern nationalist group League of the South said Saturday that it was "too bad" that John Wilkes Booth took more than two years to kill President Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
"John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate agent," Pat Hines told Alan Colmes on his Fox News radio program. "Sadly, he didn’t fulfill his mission for almost 2 1/2 years.
"But he was assigned to kill Lincoln," Hines continued. "And it’s too bad that he took as long as he did to do it."
"You’re upset that it took John Wilkes Booth as long as it did to kill Abraham Lincoln?" Colmes asked.
"Yes," Hines responded.
The interview was first reported by Mediaite,
which published a transcript of that portion of the discussion.
Hines has been speaking against efforts to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina landmarks after Dylann Roof, 21, allegedly gunned down nine African Americans in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17.
Roof, who is white, posed with the flag in pictures posted on his website and while holding a gun at Confederate websites. He is charged with nine counts of murder and a count of weapons possession and is being held on $1 million bond.
Hines told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV this week that the war on the Confederate flag was "cultural genocide."
The League of the South hosts an annual celebration of Lincoln's assassination. Booth, an actor, shot the president on April 14, 1865, as he watched a play at Ford's Theater in Washington. He died the next morning.
"He was the most murderous, treasonous president that ever existed," Hines told Colmes of Lincoln, who led the nation during the Civil War.
When asked why he endorsed a presidential assassination, he responded: "Well, he was a United States president. Well, he was commander-in-chief, which makes him a legitimate target immediately."
"Is any Commander-in-Chief a legitimate target?" Colmes then asked.
"Well, they are," Hines responded.
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