‘When the mob tears down a statue of U.S. Grant, it’s not about the Civil War—it’s because they hate America…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is urging U.S. Attorney General William Barr to prosecute the violent mobs responsible for toppling and desecrating historic American statues, monuments and memorials across the country.
Cotton, an Army veteran and Bronze Star recipient, is one of the few elected leaders brave enough to speak against the mobs.
He previously penned a New York Times op-ed that called for the National Guard and active-duty military forces to restore order as a last resort.
The op-ed sparked a mutiny at the Times that led to the forced resignation of the paper’s opinion editor.
Cotton sent a letter to Barr on Tuesday saying, “These criminals masquerade as protestors exercising their lawful right to peaceably assemble, but there can be no right to destroy public or private property.”
He spotlighted the shocking cravenness of the left-wing mobs by citing the recent toppling of a Ulysses S. Grant statue in San Francisco.
Grant was the commander of the Union forces in the Civil War. As president, he battled the Ku Klux Klan, signed the nation’s first major civil-rights legislation and presided over the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave all African Americans the right to vote.
“When the mob tears down a statue of U.S. Grant, it’s not about the Civil War—it’s because they hate America,” said Cotton.
He also cited destroyed statues and monuments of George Washington, Francis Scott Key, Saint Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus.
“It’s past time to stop the mob; these vandals should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.
Cotton issued the letter to Barr shortly after a Senate floor speech warning of the growing danger of mob rule.
Local authorities have been unwilling to arrest blatant offenders, much less prosecute them for their crimes. In many Democratic-controlled cities, elected officials have even directed the police to stand down.
Cotton commended Barr for taking federal action against rioters and looters in the absence of Democratic leadership, but he pleaded both in his letter and floor speech for Barr to target the statue-toppling mobs.
And won’t be hard, he said.
“They aren’t exactly criminal masterminds, typically filming their crimes and posting the videos on social media,” he noted.