WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — U.S. president Donald Trump stated that he has plans to issue an executive order aimed at protecting statues from being destroyed by leftist protesters and rioters, in many cases while police stand by and watch.
EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo questioned Trump yesterday on the federal government’s response to the destruction of the statues of historical figures. “Mr. President,” he asked Trump, “this week we saw Columbus go down, Roosevelt is now going down, St. Junipero Serra who built all the missions along California. What can you and the federal government do about this?”
“It’s a disgrace,” Trump said. “Most of these people don’t even know what they’re taking down.”
“We’re going to do something very soon,” Trump promised. “We’re going to do an executive order, and we're going to make the cities guard their monuments. This is a disgrace.”
Trump’s pledge came in response to the destruction of public statues across the United States within the past weeks. Protesters led by members of the American Indian Movement in St. Paul, Minnesota toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus, claiming it was “a slap in the face to all Native people and all people of color.” Christopher Columbus, famous for discovering and bringing Catholicism to America, is often erroneously attacked and blamed for slavery in the United States.
In Baltimore, a statue of the first American president and famous general, George Washington, was defaced with red blood-like paint. Rioters had written “BLM” and “Destroy Racists” on the base of the statue.
A statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the man who led the victorious army in the Civil War to defeat slavery, was torn down in San Francisco on June 19.
Originally, the protesters targeted historical figures whom they labeled as “racist.” They are now targeting Catholic statues as well.
On June 20, protesters in San Francisco and Los Angeles tore down statues of St. Junipero Serra, a missionary to America in the late eighteenth century. Serra, a Spanish Franciscan, founded nine missions in California.
On top of this, a prominent leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, Shaun King, is now calling for the destruction of images of a “white” Jesus.
“All murals and stained-glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form [of] white supremacy,” he tweeted.
In his interview with Trump, Arroyo pressed the president if there was anything he could do.
“We’re seeing unprecedented violence across the country,” Arroyo said. “Is there anything you from this office can do to restore order and safety?”
PETITION: Urge U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference to defend Catholic heritage and statues! Sign the petition here.
Trump pointed out that the states that are suffering from the riots are Democrat bastions. “Take a look … in Chicago. It’s Democrat,” he said. “All of these places are run by Democrats; 20 out of 20 are Democrat-run.”
“They don’t know what they're doing, and if Biden got in, this country would be a disaster,” Trump said. “Take a look at the way we’re running things; we’re running them good.”
“If I weren’t president, they would have overrun,” Trump continued. “We wouldn’t have any statues standing right now. Because I did things that you don’t know about to save a lot of them.”
“Now they ripped one down the other night right in front of the police headquarters,” he stated. “We have a Liberal Democrat mayor, and she should not have allowed that to happen.”
In a video responding to the destruction of American monuments, Fox commentator Tucker Carlson said that there’s a reason mobs are tearing down statues of American heroes.
“They know that if they can force you to watch as they topple your heroes, they have won. There is nothing they can’t do now. They can decide how you raise your children, how you vote, what you’re allowed to believe.”
“Once they've humiliated you, they can control you, and that’s why, across the country, mobs are tearing down America’s monuments.”
Carlson called the statue-destroyers a “serious and highly organized political movement.”
In his interview with Trump, Arroyo also mentioned Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s open letter to the president on the “children of darkness” and the “deep state.”
“Archbishop Viganò wrote your letter that you tweeted out,” Arroyo said. “In it, he said what you’re facing is a battle of the children of the light versus the children of darkness. He said these protests were infernal deceptions. How did you react to that letter? He asked people to pray for you, and is that an accurate reading where we are?”
The president characterized the letter as “a tremendous letter of support from the Catholic Church.”
“It was beautiful,” he added. “It was really three pages long, and it was a beautiful letter, and I appreciated it. Yeah, but he’s right in what he says.”
“I think he’s a great gentleman,” Trump said of Viganò. “He’s highly respected, as you know.”