Pence: ‘I’m Someone Who Believes in More Monuments, Not Less Monuments’

Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” show co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Vice President Mike Pence about his views on the push to remove some monuments dedicated to Confederate Civil War figures from the U.S. Capitol.

Pence said the decision of what monuments are in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall should be left up to the individual states and that he believed in “more monuments, not less monuments.”

Partial transcript as follows:

EARHARDT: Some are calling for the Confederate monuments at the Capitol to be taken down. Do you agree?

PENCE: Well, first off, I agree with the president that seeing people destroy public property in the name of any cause is just simply unacceptable. Communities can have conversations about what displays happen.

But I hold the view that it’s important that we remember our past and build on the progress that we have made. The United States Capitol, every state is able to donate two statues to commemorate citizens that they want remembered. And in the heart of our government. And states can make those decisions. What we have to walk away from is a desire by some to erase parts of our history just in the name of some contemporary political cause.

EARHARDT: You’re in favor of keeping those monuments?

PENCE: I think that — obviously, I think that should always be a local decision and, with regard to the U.S. Capitol, should be state decisions. But I’m someone who believes in more monuments, not less monuments. What we ought to do is we ought to remember our history. But we also ought to celebrate the progress that we’ve made since that history.

You know, when I walked back in 2010 across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis, arm and arm, and we remembered Bloody Sunday and the extraordinary progress of the civil rights movement, I can’t help but think that, rather than pulling down monuments, as some are wont to do, rather than tearing down monuments that have graced our cities all across this country for years, we ought to have been building more monuments. We ought to be celebrating the men and women who’ve helped our nation move toward a more perfect union and tell the whole story of America.

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