Congresswoman Informs Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Robert E. Lee Was Not Actually One of the Founding Fathers’
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) informed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that Robert E. Lee “was not actually one of the Founding Fathers” on Thursday after Greene pointed to the removal of a statue of Lee in her defense of an amendment seeking to stop the removal of national monuments.
During a debate over the amendment, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) said:
My friend and gentlewoman from Maine may have mentioned that this affects all monuments. In fact, it does not. As a former secretary, monuments under the Antiquities Act, there’s about 163, as I recall. This only pertains to monuments that commemorate the Founding Fathers of the United States on land under jurisdiction. I don’t recall how many monuments there are to the Founding Fathers, but there’s not many and I don’t recall any being a safety issue. Matter of fact, I recall all of them being a part of our history and an important part of our history for all to learn. So this does not affect all monuments, nor the safety. What it affects is the very essence of the country. I support this amendment.
After Pingree responded by reading the amendment’s provision that “none of the funds made available by this act may be used to remove any monument on land under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior,” Greene argued:
Actually, there should be no funds allocated to remove any monument and there’s no necessary reason to remove the monuments. This is the Democrats’ and the Biden administration’s effort to erase our history, just as they have done to the statue of Robert E. Lee. This is an outrage. This is exactly what they do in communist countries and the Democrats want to accuse us of book burning while we try to get pornography books out of our children’s schools? The Democrats will do nothing to stop their attempts to destroy our nation’s history and we must protect it.
While Greene did not say that Lee was a founding father, Pingree responded:
Just to clear up a couple of things, my colleague mentioned the founding fathers. Robert E. Lee was not actually one of the Founding Fathers, he was a general of the Confederacy. That was the city of Charlottesville, that wasn’t a national monument when that statue was removed, and I just have to say I find it rich that the party that has supported book banning in our libraries, rewriting curriculum, not talking about our history over and over again, is the very one that is saying that we have to often keep painful monuments in places where they do damage, where they interfere with people’s ability to enjoy the particular area that they’re in.
Watch above via C-SPAN.
