An analyst slammed the Department of Defense’s plans to reinstall a Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery.
On Wednesday, the department said it would spend about $10 million over two years to reinstall a monument to the Confederacy. The original sculpture was erected in 1914 and features a classical female figure and sanitized depictions of slavery, according to the Associated Press. Activists described it as “problematic from the ground up,” the AP reported.
GOP strategist Brad Todd suggested that the statue should have been torn down using official processes, instead of “by criminal thugs” operating at night.
“Pete Hegseth says it’s a reconciliation statue,” Todd said.
That argument didn’t sit well with anti-Trump conservative Tara Setmayer, a former GOP communications director, who responded forcefully to Todd’s comments.
“Well, then Pete Hegseth needs to pick up a book unless he’s okay with the Lost Cause, because that statue is a statue that is romanticizing the Lost Cause and the Confederacy,” Setmayer said.
The Lost Cause refers to a theory that portrays the Confederacy as a morally superior entity to the overbearing federal government. It also minimizes the role of slavery in starting the Civil War, despite ample evidence that shows slavery was the root issue of the conflict.
“It depicts a Black slave handing over a baby to a Confederate soldier and making it seem like ‘Oh, so sorry that you’re going off to war’ when they were traitors and treasonous,” Setmayer said. “That Black slave right there, she wasn’t happy about doing that.”