Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) checked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday, after the Republican brought up the removal of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue while going to bat for an amendment that bars the use of certain funds to take down national monuments.
Greene — who cited George Orwell’s “1984” while rambling about “communist Democrats” erasing the past — touched on the removal of Confederate symbols in 2020 before noting the recent melting of a Lee statue previously taken down in Charlottesville, the Virginia city where 2017′s Unite the Right rally was held.
“This is the Democrats’ and the [President Joe] Biden administration’s effort to erase our history, just as they have done to the statue of Robert E. Lee. This is an outrage,” said Greene, who has sought to stand up for Confederate monuments in the past and was once criticized by a Lee relative.
Greene’s comments arrived after Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) said the amendment “only pertains to monuments” recognizing the Founding Fathers. Pingree cited a provision describing how “none of the funds made available by this act may be used to remove any monument” on land under Interior Department jurisdiction.
Greene replied by declaring that there should be no funds allocated to remove “any monument,” before Pingree hit back with a history lesson.
“Just to clear up a couple of things, my colleague mentioned the Founding Fathers. Robert E. Lee was not actually one of the Founding Fathers; he was a general of the Confederacy. That was the city of Charlottesville; that wasn’t a national monument when that statue was removed,” she said.
“And I just have to say, I find it rich that the party that has supported book banning in our libraries, rewriting curriculum, not talking about our history over and over again is the very one that is saying that we have to often keep painful monuments in places where they do damage, where they interfere with people’s ability to enjoy the particular area that they’re in.”