Washington • Leading Democrats on Sunday morning talk shows defended moves by local governments to remove monuments of Confederate leaders, saying that the unrest in Charlottesville last week showed that the statues had become rallying points for white supremacists instead of educational tools about the nation’s history.
Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said President Donald Trump “got this wrong” when he expressed opposition to taking down commemorations to Confederate leaders. People don’t need monuments to learn history, Cardin said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“You don’t need a monument offensive to certain parts of our history being glorified in order to appreciate history,” Cardin told host Bill Hemmer.