McConnell calls protesters who vandalized statues ‘historically illiterate’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday denounced protesters who vandalize statues as “common criminals” and “historically illiterate.”
The Kentucky Republican weighed in as President Trump prepares an executive order to deter monument destruction and warns participants they face 10 years in prison.
“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 in a Senate floor speech.
“American people know they don’t need history lessons from common criminals who are dragging George Washington through the dirt,” he added.
Protests stemming from the killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police increasingly have targeted monuments, particularly of slave owners and Confederate leaders.
But on Tuesday, a Wisconsin crowd toppled, beheaded and threw into a lake a statue of abolitionist Hans Christian Heg, who led an anti-slave catcher militia and died fighting for the Union in 1863. Last week, San Francisco activists toppled a bust of Grant, who briefly owned a slave before leading Union troops to victory. As president, Grant repressed the Ku Klux Klan.
Washington statutes have been toppled and spray-painted across the country, including in DC and New York.
McConnell also said Thursday that Democrats aren’t serious about passing police reform in response to Floyd’s death at the hands of cops in Minneapolis. Senate Democrats blocked a GOP reform bill on Wednesday and House Democrats are preparing to pass a bill Thursday without negotiation with Republicans.
McConnell said it was “jarring to witness” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) denounce the GOP bill and talk “right past Sen. [Tim] Scott as if he were not leading this discussion, as if he were barely here.”
Scott (R-SC) is one of three black senators and authored the Republican proposal.
Ahead of the House vote on Democrats’ police package, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Thursday that Scott’s bill was “sham fake reform” that “does nothing real.”
McConnell also swiped at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for saying in an interview Tuesday that Republicans are “trying to get away with murder actually — the murder of George Floyd.”
“A politician who compares a policy disagreement to a brutal murder has just permanently forfeited the moral high ground to the grown-ups who want solutions,” McConnell said.