Students at the University of Missouri were protesting and calling for a statue of Jefferson to be removed back in 2015. Students at the University of Virginia, which was founded by Jefferson, covered up a statue of him just one month after these authoritative pieces were written. As these pieces were being published and read, CNN commentator Angela Rye was on the network comparing Washington and Jefferson to Lee.

“I don’t care if it’s a George Washington statue, or a Thomas Jefferson statue, or a Robert E. Lee statue, they all need to come down,” Rye said .

This was made even more clear over the years as liberal institutions and Democratic politicians continued to embrace a position of opposing the founding fathers. Take the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which erroneously claimed that preserving slavery was one of the primary reasons for the American Revolution.

Or Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who claimed we must “listen to everybody” and “listen to the argument there” about removing statues of Washington. This was when Duckworth was still being considered as a possible running mate for Joe Biden. It was also the day after the Fourth of July.