Top Trump loyalist: Slavery is part of our "good history"

The horrifying white supremacist violence in Charlottesville has led to a nationwide push to remove statues honoring Confederate generals and politicians. The effort has been met with angry resistance from Donald Trump and his supporters.

One such angry Trump supporter is Katrina Pierson, the former Trump campaign spokeswoman who stirred controversy by claiming “So what? They’re Muslim,” when told who Trump’s immigration plan would hurt.

Pierson was a frequent surrogate for Trump during the campaign, spouting falsehoods and conspiracy theories almost as frequently as her boss. She once suggested 9/11 was “an inside job,” and infamously blamed President Barack Obama for invading Afghanistan in 2001, a claim she later blamed on a faulty earpiece.

Pierson, who co-founded the pro-Trump nonprofit that threatened to primary GOP Nevada Sen. Dean Heller and still goes on TV to defend Trump, appeared on “Fox & Friends” Monday with Johns Hopkins professor Wendy Osefo to discuss the merit of Confederate monuments.

During the segment, Pierson gave a shocking reason why she supported leaving the statues in place:

OSEFO: Confederate monuments came after the South lost the war. Six hundred and fifty thousand people died and the Southerners were considered treasonous. On top of that, this sprung up after December 1865 when the Ku Klux Klan actually was trying to revolt against black local power that came about during the Reconstructionist era. So this is not a symbol of patriotism. This is a symbol of hatred and division. And while it is a piece of American history, it’s not necessarily the good part of American history. It’s actually nefarious. So it doesn’t deserve a place on state grounds. It deserves a place in museums. And that’s where they need to be.

PIERSON: It absolutely deserves a place, because bad history is still good history for this country—

OSEFO: Slavery is good history?

PIERSON: Considering where we are today, where we are today. Absolutely.

OSEFO: Slavery is good history? Absolutely. Oh, wow.

PIERSON: During those times, during those times — think about this for a second. Where would we be today if not for that Civil War? How would our children even know—

OSEFO: Where would we be without slavery? Are you serious? Do you hear what you’re saying?

PIERSON: How would our children even know how special and how wonderful this country is that we can even be having this discussion today?

Pierson seems to be claiming that we need to celebrate slavery in order to appreciate how good it is that we ended slavery.

This is in fact not an unusual argument among Confederate apologists. Supporters of the statues, most of which were erected in the early 20th century by white supremacist groups to reassert their dominance over Southern politics, claim they are necessary to remember the lessons of the Civil War.

In fact, they do the exact opposite, glorifying the slaveowners who started the war and trivializing the human cost of both slavery and the troops who died to hold our union together. Typically war memorials honor victims, not perpetrators.

The fact Pierson had to twist herself into the logical knot of defending slavery reveals the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the pretext for these statues’ existence.

But given that Pierson remains a staunch defender of Trump — who last week insisted that these statues are “beautiful” and can never be “comparably replaced” — it’s not surprising that she’s echoing the same sentiments.