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Jeh Johnson: Taking Down Monuments a Matter of ‘Public Safety’ and ‘Homeland Security’

‘My great grandfather was born a slave in 1860 in Lynchburg’
By Grabien Staff

RADDATZ: Joining me now is Jeh Johnson.

He served as President Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security for the final three years of his administration.

And Mr. Johnson, thanks very much for joining us.

I’d like to...

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Thanks for inviting me, Martha.

RADDATZ: — I’d like your reaction to what Mr. Falwell just said. He talked about it being political correctness.

JOHNSON: Well, it’s interesting, sometimes people have more in common than one might realize. Like Mr. Falwell, I’m an attorney. Like Mr. Falwell’s father, Reverend Falwell, my great grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, born in Lynchburg, Virginia.

My great grandfather was born a slave in 1860 in Lynchburg. He was freed by Abraham Lincoln when he was a child. He taught himself to read and write. He put himself through school. And he founded a church called The Lee Street Baptist Church in Bristol, Virginia in 1980, which is still there.

And it’s in that vein that I’d like to respond here, both as former secretary of Homeland Security and as an African-American.

President Trump said this week that Jefferson and Washington were slave owners, where does it stop?

Where does it end?

I think most Americans understand — most African-Americans understand that many of the founders of our nation were slave owners. But most of us are not advocating that we take them off the currency or drop Washington’s name from the nation’s capital.

I have first cousins — I have cousins whose names are Washington and they’re not changing their names. They’re proud of their name.

What alarms so many of us, from a security perspective, is that so many of the statues, the Confederate monuments, are now, modern-day, becoming symbols and rallying points for white nationalism, for neo-Nazis, for the KKK. And this is most alarming. We fought a world war against Nazism. The KKK rained terror on African-Americans for generations.

And so a number of Americans, rightly, Republican and Democrat, are very concerned and very alarmed. And I salute those in cities and states who are taking down a lot of these monuments for reasons of public safety and security.

RADDATZ: If...

JOHNSON: And that’s not a matter of political correctness. That’s a matter of public safety and homeland security and doing what’s right.

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