The Slatest

Trump Describes Confederate Monuments as “Beautiful” in Today’s Edition of Our Dumb Universe

Statue of Confederate General N.B. Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee’s famously terrible statue of Confederate general, early KKK member, and Gump-family name inspiration Nathan Bedford Forrest.*

Brent Moore/Flickr CC

Tacking slightly away from such poorly received talking points as “defending your hometown from the KKK is just as bad as being in the KKK” and “the rally during which white men carrying torches shouted Nazi slogans involved ‘some very fine people,’ ” Donald Trump is focusing Thursday on the cause of preserving monuments to America’s most fondly remembered slavery/treason rebellion:

Incidentally, two of Stonewall Jackson’s great-great-grandsons wrote a piece in Slate, published Wednesday night, calling on the city of Richmond, Virginia, to take down its statue of their great-great-grandfather. “In our view, the removal of the Jackson statue and others will necessarily further difficult conversations about racial justice,” they wrote. “It will begin to tell the truth of us all coming to our senses.” That’d be nice.

*Correction, Aug. 20, 2017: This post initially misidentified Nathan Bedford Forrest as Nathaniel Bedford Forrest.