As Donald Trump defends Confederate statues, Cory Booker wants them removed from Capitol

President Donald Trump used a series of tweets Thursday to defend Confederate statues, hours after Sen. Cory Booker used his own Twitter feed to announce legislation to have them removed from the Capitol.

Trump's tweets were aimed at decisions by cities such as Charlottesville, Virginia, and Baltimore to remove statues and monuments connected with Civil War generals and other figures. Booker's bill could put the issue on the Capitol Hill agenda at a time many of Trump's priorities are being debated.

"Sad to see the history and culture of our country being ripped apart," Trump said about the statues' removal. "The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed."

Trump also warned that if statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were removed, tributes to Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who were slave owners, could be next.

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Trump made similar comments on Tuesday during a news conference in which he said "both sides" shared blame for violence that happened in Charlottesville on Saturday after a "Unite the Right" rally was held to protest the removal of the statue of Lee.

Booker said statues in the Capitol's Statuary Hall should be a place for patriots.

"Individuals who were treasonous to the United States, who took up arms against their own country, and inflicted catastrophic death and suffering among U.S. citizens, should not be afforded such a rare honor in this sacred space," he said. 

Booker said that Confederate statutes are to millions of Americans symbols of bigotry and hate and "symbolic to some who seek to revise history and advance hate and division."

Under existing law, each state has the power to place two statues in Statuary Hall, and 12 of them depict people who fought for the Confederacy or were active in Confederate politics, according to the Washington Post.

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New Jersey's two statues are of Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Philip Kearny, a Union general in the Civil War.

Booker said the Confederate statues belong in a museum, where they could be put in the proper historical context.  

"These statues must be moved not just because of who they were in the past, but because who we are now as a nation and who we must be to ensure an even better and brighter future," he said.

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York indicated Thursday afternoon he wanted to avoid having Confederate statues become a substitute for focusing on Trump's comments Tuesday that "both sides" at a white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville shared blame for violence.

“President Trump and [adviser] Steve Bannon are trying to divert attention away from the president's refusal to unequivocally and full-throatedly denounce white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and other forms of bigotry," Schumer said.

"While it is critical that we work towards the goal of Senator Cory Booker’s legislation, we must continue to denounce and resist President Trump for his reprehensible actions," he said.

Democrats are in the minority in both chambers, so senators like Booker, of Newark, have little leverage to force action on their bills. 

But Congress has a heavy agenda this fall and will likely need Democratic support to get some bills to Trump's desk, including measures to raise the debt ceiling and keep the government operating beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

Under current law, a state official such as a governor would have to make a request to replace a statue.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement Thursday urging Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to join Democrats in supporting legislation to remove the statues.

Pelosi noted that when she was speaker, a statue of Robert E. Lee was moved from a place of honor in the hall and replaced with one of civil rights activist Rosa Parks. 

“There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country," Pelosi said.

Democrats in 2015 and 2016 fought to ban Confederate flags from national cemeteries and parks. A flag ban for military cemeteries passed the House, but never became law.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, however, issued its own rules barring flying the battle flag from fixed flagpoles, though it continues to allow small flags on graves, provided public funds were not used to maintain them. The National Park Service also took steps to block the flag from being sold at gift stores.