P O L I T I C S

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30

Edited by

Amanda Kolson Hurley

BloombergBusinessweek August3, 2020

● Trumpseizedonthe

monumentproteststosend

federalagentsintoU.S.cities

The Struggle Over

Statues

leaving a number of empty pedestals in their wake.

This did not escape the attention of President

Trump. On June 26, he signed an executive order

on protecting America’s monuments and memo-

rials. The document frames widespread unrest as

a siege coordinated by a network of militant left-

wing extremists. To make its case, the White House

focused on examples of overcorrection, namely a

statue of President Ulysses S. Grant that was top-

pled by protesters in San Francisco. (Grant, who

led the Union Army that defeated the Confederacy

and who smashed the original Ku Klux Klan, was

the last president to own a slave.) With his poll

numbers waning, Trump sensed an opportunity

LateinMay,asprotestsoverthepolicekilling of

George Floyd erupted across the U.S., a crowd

in Birmingham, Ala., toppled a bronze statue of

Charles Linn, a captain in the Confederate Navy

and a notable banker in the city after the war. It was

the first domino to fall: In the weeks that followed,

demonstrators in dozens of cities set their sights on

statues of Confederates and other historical figures,