Speaker McCarthy Addresses Democrats’ Issues With Statues, Portraits

Offending symbols point out true history of Democratic Party, he says

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gives remarks at a news conference in Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 02, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy says he is fine with Democrat demands that statues, portraits, and other artwork depicting former Confederate politicians, military figures, and slave owners be removed from public display.

“I thought they should have gone farther,” he said.

The subject came up during a press briefing on Feb. 2, when a reporter pointed out that, as speaker, McCarthy had the authority to determine what type of art was displayed in the House of Representatives. McCarthy said Democrats’ efforts to remove past symbols of racism need not stop with art.

“They should remove the name of their party as well,” the Republican speaker said.

A marble bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney is displayed in the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on March 9, 2020. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

After the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Democrats joined activists in trying to remove any symbols of the Confederate South or America’s history with slavery.

At that time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal of four portraits of past speakers because they had ties to the Confederate States during the Civil War. In 2021, Congress passed a bill ordering the removal of statues of historical figures with links to the Confederacy.

The statues to be removed included a bust of Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and author of the Dred Scott Decision. The list also included John C. Calhoun, Charles Aycock, and James P. Clarke, among others who favored slavery or segregation.

McCarthy said he understood the Democrats’ desire to remove the symbols considering their own party’s history. According to McCarthy, each statue was of a Democrat. The sculptures had been approved by state legislatures that had been majority Democrats, and came from states that had civil rights histories that were spotty at best.

“I watched what the Democrats did, bringing Jim Crow laws to the South and going after black Americans,” McCarthy said.

The Party of Lincoln

He pointed out that the Republican Party started with Abraham Lincoln, the president credited with freeing the slaves in America. McCarthy pointed out that slavery, defended by Southern Democrats, was the issue that brought about the Civil War. He called the war the “greatest challenge ever to our Constitution.”

McCarthy said Joseph Rainey of South Carolina, the first black American elected to the House of Representatives, was a Republican.

He suggested that the statues remind the Democratic Party’s true history.

“If I was a Democrat, I wouldn’t be proud of their legacy, I wouldn’t be proud of their history, and I would want to change it, “ said McCarthy.

“There’s not one Republican you have to take down.”