RFK Jr blasts removal of Confederate statues as 'destroying history'

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., blasted the removal of Confederate statues last week, claiming he had a "visceral reaction" to the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee in 2021.

The town of Charlottesville, Virginia, removed the statue of Lee after pushback from the community about honoring a Confederate general. The bronze statue was eventually melted down by the city's African American museum last year, to create a new statue instead. Charlottesville was also the location of a white supremacist rally in 2017, where three people died.

Kennedy claimed that removing statues and renaming schools was "destroying history," and that the United States needed to be "sophisticated enough" to handle its own history and the choices of the country's ancestors.

“I have a visceral reaction against ... the attacks on those statues,” Kennedy said on an episode of the podcast “Timcast IRL” on Friday. “I mean, I grew up, you know, in Virginia. I know that … there were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves and … I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are.”

Kennedy said it was important to celebrate the "good" qualities of people throughout history, including Lee, who had  “extraordinary qualities of leadership.” 

“If we want to find people who were completely virtuous on every issue throughout history, we would erase all of history,” the Independent hopeful said.  

When questioned on the debate between Columbus Day, and Indigenous Peoples' Day, Kennedy said it was important to recognize the indigenous people who faced one of the "greatest genocides" in American history, but he did not advocate for abolishing Columbus Day.