After White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was “an honorable man” and suggested that the Civil War could have been avoided if an “ability to compromise” had been demonstrated, Twitter went berserk and dubbed Kelly a “racist.”
In an interview that aired Monday on the new Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle,” Ingraham asked Kelly about the recent decision by the historic Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, to remove plaques from pews where President George Washington and Gen. Robert E. Lee once sat, and about removal of such historic markers. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, said that Lee, in particular, was “an honorable man” and that removing monuments and historical markers represented “a lack of appreciation of history.”
“There are certain things in history that were good, and other things that were not so good,” Kelly told Ingraham. “The lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”
In the aftermath of Kelly’s interview, the terms “Civil War,” “Confederacy” and “#RobertELee” began trending on Twitter as the social media platform erupted in condemnation of Kelly’s defense of recognizing national history.
Walter Shaub, who served as the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics until his resignation in July, tweeted, “It appears John Kelly is going as a racist for Halloween. I suspect he’s also going as one for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday …”
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