Trump defends monuments on July Fourth

Shortly after President Donald Trump extolled Christopher Columbus in an Independence Day speech in Washington, rioters in Baltimore pulled down a statue of the Italian explorer and threw it in the city’s Inner Harbor. As anti-racist activists call for the removal of monuments to Confederate generals and slaveholders, many are also targeting statues of Columbus because of his mistreatment of indigenous people.

What did the president say? “We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children,” Trump said on Saturday. He vowed to establish a national garden with more memorials to heroic Americans. The removal of historic monuments—by both official decree and spontaneous vandalism—has gained momentum in communities across the country since the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died after an arrest attempt in May in Minneapolis.

Dig deeper: Read the president’s executive order calling for building the National Garden of American Heroes.