Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) rejected any claim Democrats were working to rename military bases and war memorials for the sake of justice or unification in America.
The Missouri Republican lawmaker said the push was about politics and the satisfying the so-called cancel culture.
“You know, I can’t say that I’m all surprised, Laura, because right now, the United States Senate, you’ve got the Senate Democrats watching the statues of Washington and Ulysses S. Grant,” he said. “Now, Lincoln comes down at the same time. They’re trying to force through renaming all of our military bases and war memorials for fallen soldiers, taking those down behind closed doors without any public discussion. This is their agenda. This doesn’t have anything to do with pursuing justice or unifying the country. This is all about sheer political gain, political calculation, and trying to satisfy the cancel culture that they are pushing forward. And I’d tell you what, Laura, it’s a mistake. It’s dividing the country. It’s the wrong thing to do.”
Hawley said he anticipated pushback from the public and said he has an effort underway to prevent “backroom” renaming of those bases and memorials.
“I think that Americans are not going to want to see our history erased wholesale,” he said. “And when you’re pulling down statues of Ulysses S. Grant, when you’re taking down statues of Theodore Roosevelt, now protesters in D.C. say they’re going to pull down statues of Abraham Lincoln. I just don’t think that this is where the American people are. I mean, we can have a conversation as a country about, for instance, military bases, how we name them, how we do it. We ought to have that conversation in public. We ought to have that together like we would as a family. We ought to do it out in the open, which is, by the way, what I propose.”
“I’ve introduced legislation that would stop the Democrat’s mandatory back-door backroom renaming of all of these bases and taking down all of these memorials to fallen soldiers who would say, ‘Well, let’s have a conversation out of the open. Let’s involve everybody. Let’s do it in public. Let’s be reasonable about this,'” Hawley added. “But that’s not what they want, Laura. And I think that this is I think they’re going to find that the American people are tired of the canceled culture. They’re tired of the woke mob, and they want to hold on to who we are together and to find common ground.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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