White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's praise for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was not offensive to some Americans — and "just because you don't like history doesn't mean that you can erase it, and pretend that it didn't happen," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.
"That's the point that Gen. Kelly was trying to make," she said at the daily press briefing. "To try to create something and push a narrative that simply doesn't exist is just, frankly, outrageous and absurd."
Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, praised Lee as "an honorable man" and told Laura Ingraham on Fox News that "the lack of an ability to compromise" led to the Civil War that engulfed the nation from 1861 to 1865.
Ingraham had asked Kelly a recent decision by a Virginia church to remove plaques that honored the Lee and President George Washington.
The plaques were hung as a set inside the church in 1870 and were scheduled to be removed in light of the deadly protests in Charlottesville in August.
"I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man," Kelly said. "He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country.
"It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now, it's different today.
"But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand," he told Ingraham.
The chief of staff's comments came under broad fire from historians, liberal social commentators, racial injustice groups, and Democrats as insensitive and endorsing slavery.
Sanders bashed reporters for wanting to "push" Kelly's comments as evidence of "some sort of a racially charged and divided White House.
"Frankly, the only people I see stoking political racism right now are the people in the groups that are running ads like the one you saw taking place in Virginia earlier this week.
"That's the type of thing that I think really is a problem.
"It is absurd and disgraceful to try to keep making comments and take them out of context and mean something they don't."
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