Country music legend Charlie Daniels isn’t in favor of people tearing any of the Confederate statues down and even compared the act to what ISIS is doing.
“The Devil Went Down To Georgia” singer joined Rita Cosby on Newsmax on Wednesday to discuss the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend and the events that have followed since then. Daniels started off his argument about why the Confederate statues should stay standing by comparing those who mean to tear them down to ISIS.
“That’s what ISIS is doing, There were pieces of history over there they didn’t like, they’re taking ’em down,” Daniels began.
“Where does it go to Rita? I mean where does it stop? Is it just gonna be Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson or are we headed into Jefferson and Washington, who were both slave owners. How deep in history are we gonna go? Is everybody that we disagree with, we are gonna have to wipe every semblance of them out? Is that what this is all about? Is this where it’s gonna end, is this where it’s gonna go?”
President Trump made similar remarks in a press conference earlier this week, which he has stuck to in several tweets since then.
“I mean, come on! You don’t have to condone what happened in the civil war,” Daniels explained. “We all know what it was fought for–you certainly don’t have to condone it. But they are statues of people who are part of our history.”
“If you don’t like it, don’t look at it,” Daniels recommends. “There’s all kind of things, there’s all kinds of symbolisms and things, in this country that I don’t like. But I’m not gonna go tear ’em down, I just don’t look at them.”
“They’re not standing there talking, these statues are not preaching, they’re not saying anything, they’re not shouting out some kind of crazy epithets or something, they’re just sitting there. So just turn around and don’t look at them,” he repeated.
As for all the fuss about Trump’s remarks condemning those involved in Charlottesville and the media making a big mess about it being “too little too late,” Daniels says people are expecting a politician even though that’s not who they elected.
“The guy is a human being, he’s not a politician,” Daniels said of the president. “I think that we tend to judge what he does by the reaction of politicians we’ve had been in office before because they’re so conscious and so sensitive to political correctness and trying to react in a way that the press will favor and I mean he just won’t do that. He’s his own man.”
“I thought it was well stated. I thought he said what needed to be said and, you know, I just wish they’d give the guy a chance,” Daniels added. “Like I said, the guy’s not a politician, he is not a diplomat, he is who he is.”
