Marjorie Taylor Greene Gets Shocking History Lesson on House Floor
The Republican representative seemed to confuse Confederate General Robert E. Lee for someone else.
Marjorie Taylor Greene got an embarrassing fact check on Thursday: Robert E. Lee wasnât a Founding Father.
While defending an amendment to protect against the removal of monuments depicting the Founding Fathers on federal land, Greene notably lumped in the removal of the Confederate generalâs image in Charlottesville as an example of how âCommunist Democratsâ have attempted to erase U.S. âculture, way of life, and history.â
âActually, there should be no funds allocated to remove any monument, and thereâs no necessary reason to remove the monuments,â Greene said. âThis is the Democratsâ and the Biden administrationâs effort to erase our history, just as they have done to the statue of Robert E. Lee. This is an outrage.â
Democratic Representative Chellie Pingree wasnât convinced that the Georgia congresswoman knew her facts, however.
âJust 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,â Pingree said.
The Maine Democrat also said she found it ârichâ that the party focused on âbook 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 peopleâs ability to enjoy the particular area that theyâre in.â
Nearly 80 percent of Confederate monuments were erected between 1890 and 1940âlong after the end of the war and at the height of the Jim Crow eraâwhen Southern states legalized racial segregation under a system of racial apartheid. Groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which admitted the white daughters of Confederate soldiers and politicians, worked to instill a âlost causeâ narrative of the war by placing Confederate flags in classrooms, monitoring textbooks, and ultimately, creating monuments.