Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted people who are destroying monuments and statues, the New York Post reports.
The Kentucky Republican’s comments on the Senate floor Thursday came as President Donald Trump is preparing to issue an executive order to protect monuments from being destroyed.
McConnell slammed the vandals as “historically illiterate” and called them “common criminals.”
“Americans have been ordered to rethink and relearn our nation’s history by a movement that is itself so historically illiterate that they mistake George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and an 18th century abolitionist as enemies of justice and destroy their monuments,” McConnell said. “American people know they don’t need history lessons from common criminals who are dragging George Washington through the dirt.”
As calls for racial justice take place nationwide amid the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis last month, some people have been targeting monuments of Confederate leaders.
In many cities, statues of Confederate generals have been removed. Vandals are now going after other leaders, some whom helped put an end to slavery.
On Tuesday, a statue of abolitionist Hans Christian Heg was beheaded and thrown into a lake, the newspaper reports. Heg led an anti-slave catcher militia and died fighting for the Union in 1863.
Last week, protesters knocked over a bust of President Grant. Grant did briefly own a slave, but he led Union troops to victory during the Civil War and helped suppress the Ku Klux Klan.
George Washington statutes have been desecrated in New York and in Washington, D.C.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.