Sen. Tammy Duckworth: "The president at Mt. Rushmore was standing on ground that was stolen from Native Americans."
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning, Duckworth was asked about recent calls to remove monuments commemorating American founding fathers like Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slave owners. Rather than answer directly, Duckworth first changed the subject, then made inaccurate references to President Trump ’s speech at Mount Rushmore on Friday evening. “Well let me just say that we should start off by having a national dialogue on it at some point, but right now we’re in the middle of a global pandemic … and one the countries who are opposed to us, Russia, has put a bounty on American troops’ heads," she said. "What really struck me about the speech that the president gave at Mount Rushmore was that he spent more time worried about honoring dead Confederates than he did talking about the lives of 130,000 Americans who lost their lives to COVID-19 or by warning Russia off the bounty they’re putting on Americans’ head