[NFA] U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he opposed removing the towering statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City's American Museum of Natural History.
Colette Luke has more.
Trump opposed to removing Roosevelt statue in NYC
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he opposed removing the towering statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City's American Museum of Natural History.
The statue – which stands prominently outside the museum's main entrance - shows Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man by his side.
Many critics have said the work symbolizes racial discrimination and colonial expansion.
The museum said its decision was based on the piece itself, along with its "hierarchical composition," and was not about Roosevelt, a Republican president the museum continues to honor as a “pioneering conservationist.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday said the city was in favor of the request from the museum to remove the statue because it "depicts black and indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior." Trump on Monday tweeted: "Ridiculous, don't do it," The move comes as protesters across the United States and around the world in anti-racism demonstrations demand that authorities take down monuments honoring pro-slavery Confederate figures and the architects of Europe's colonies.
Last week, a statue of Christopher Columbus was removed in St.
Louis and a Confederate monument was removed in Decatur, Georgia.
While protesters in Raleigh, North Carolina last Friday toppled a Confederate statue off its pedestal.
At a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Trump on Saturday blasted the protests: “The unhinged left wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our monuments... and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control.
We're not conforming.”