Fox & Friends: Monticello is making “Thomas Jefferson a bad guy in his own home” by talking about slavery too much
Rachel Campos-Duffy: “This is a diabolical plan on their part to populate these positions that have influence over how America tells its story”
Published
Citation
From the July 10, 2022, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Weekend
PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): We're talking about Thomas Jefferson and the cover of today's New York Post is “Pursuit of wokeness: Jefferson's legacy dissed in his own home." What are we talking about? Well you can go to Monticello, you could see the house Jefferson designed, where his library was, where he read and wrote some of those famous words in our country's history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Well, if you actually go there today and take a tour, the story you hear of Thomas Jefferson -- it's not about that. It's about how terrible Thomas Jefferson was because he was a slave owner. And all of us here have acknowledged you acknowledge all parts of the past good, and bad, but they've made it a one-sided point of view that makes Thomas Jefferson a bad guy in his own home. And the Post is writing about it this morning.
RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY (CO-HOST): Right, and it's not really caring about people who are going on vacation to these places, they want to feel good about America. There's a reason why you stop at Monticello or any of these other houses. I went to James Madison's house, and also experienced something very similar to this. The sign if you walk into Monticello by the way, says: “Is ‘all men are created equal' being lived up to in our country today? When will we know when it is?" And after you leave the museum tour, which again makes you feel guilty and not so great about America, at the end there's a gift shop where you can buy Ibram X. Kendi's how to be a racist, how to not be a racist book --
JOEY JONES (CO-HOST): This is a racist human being who writes books about hating white people.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: Right, and all of these sort of books that are damning of America and suggesting that were still a racist country are for sale in the gift shop.
...
HEGSETH: The funding and the people behind the foundation that runs it, all leftists, many tied to the 1619 project. They're committed to telling the worst story of America and now they're doing it inside the homes of the Founding Fathers.
JONES: Those aren't historians, they're activists.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: And those founders and the donors and the people who are on those boards, that is not a coincidence. This is a diabolical plan on their part to populate these positions that have influence over how America tells its story.