Trump weaponized the Founding Fathers’ moral failures to give Robert E. Lee cover

Evidence

In Trump’s hands, the celebration of the Confederacy—of a region that committed treason and did so to defend the institution of slavery—was American history. Robert E. Lee was no different from the Founding Fathers. Trump wanted to use the moral failings of the Founding Fathers to give Lee cover. By playing on the assumption that Washington and Jefferson are essentially “uncancellable” in most Americans’ eyes, he sought to suggest there were two sides of the argument for Lee as well, or that taking down statues of Lee was somehow a slippery slope that would lead to the unraveling of our basic moral assumptions about American history. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 261