President Donald Trump said Monday he's planning an executive order to "make cities guard their monuments" against being damaged or destroyed by protesters.
"We are going to do an executive order and make the cities guard their monuments," Trump told Eternal Word Television Network's Raymond Arroyo, in a clip from an interview played on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle." "This is a disgrace."
Trump insisted that some of the statues are "great artwork. This is magnificent artwork, as good as there is anywhere in the world, as good as you see in France, as good as you see anywhere. It's a disgrace. Most of these people don't even know what they're taking down."
Trump told Arroyo, also a correspondent for Fox News, that he was disturbed in particular when protesters toppled a statue of late President Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the United States Army in the last 13 months of the Civil War.
"You saw it ... where they want to take [Grant] down. He's the one who stopped the ones that everyone dislikes so much," Trump said, referencing Confederate military officers whose statues have been vandalized or destroyed.
Arroyo told show host Laura Ingraham that Trump didn't elaborate on how his order would be made, but said that it's possible Trump could designate the statues as National Historic Landmarks or include them in a "national trust."
"It is a question, certainly in my mind, how the federal branch can impose its will on these cities and municipalities," Arroyo said. "I'm sure the White House counsel's office is working on it. That is big news that we haven't heard yet, [that] there is an executive order forthcoming."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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