‘Hold On!’ CNN’s Abby Phillip Bristles At Trump Fan’s Slavery Take Amid New Erasure

CNN anchor Abby Phillip bristled at Trump supporters’ takes on slavery after she asked them to “square” a new move to erase slavery from a historical exhibit with the claim that it’s “unfair” to accuse President Donald Trump of “racist policies.”

This week, Trump’s National Park Service took heat for removing plaques about slavery from an exhibit at the Philadelphia home of the late President George Washington and Martha Washington.

On Friday night’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Phillip hosted a panel consisting of Lydia Moynihan, Yemesi Egbewoel, Lance Trover, Xochitl Hinojosa, and Van Lathan.

Phillip singled out Moynihan and Trover — reliable Trump defenders — to explain how criticizing this move is unfair:

PHILLIP: So, can I just ask, to our conservative friends at the table, when the Trump administration is accused of pursuing racist policies, a lot of times conservatives say, that’s unfair. And then they do things like this. How do you square the two?

TROVER: Well, I don’t believe in really tearing anything down. I think we have to, to your point, I think we have to accept our history for what it is. I think if you talk to some in the conservative community, they would say, is this there, to your point about marrying two together, everybody knows slavery is terrible. It’s taught in school. Everybody knows these guys own slaves. The

question among some, and I would say in the administration has become, is it there in this particular location to honor and memorialize and remember those slaves? Or is it there to diminish or somehow embarrass George Washington?

PHILLIP: Does it matter?

TROVER: I’m not, I’m telling you, I’m not– I’m just telling you, you’re asking me, you’re asking me how they square, I’m saying that’s the question that comes to mind.

PHILLIP: Does it matter whether the truth diminishes how people see a person if it is the truth?

TROVER: No, I’m not disagreeing and I’m saying that I think that’s, you asked me how people in the conservative community square it. That is what I hear from people saying, well, we all know they own slaves. Why, you know, does this particular one, why does it have to be there to honor one of our founding fathers who, you know, or is it meant to disparage him?

I’m not saying I agree with it, Abby. I’m just saying you asked me to explain.

PHILLIP: There are a lot of things that Trump does, but it’s things like this that make him the polarizing figure that he is and they could easily not do stuff like this, but they do it.

MOYNIHAN: Well, to be clear, no one at this table, no one in the administration is saying we shouldn’t teach about the horrors of slavery. That was a shameful chapter.

I think the question is the balance and I pulled up some of, I pulled up what some of the things that are taught in the Philadelphia school system, widely taught that Western expansion was racist, widely taught that, foreign policy should be examined through the lens of race and racism. There’s a huge emphasis though, there’s a huge emphasis though on–

PHILLIP: I’m talking about the plaques that–

I know, you’re pulling up what they are, what they are supposedly teaching in Philadelphia schools. I’m talking about the plaques that they’re taking down off of a historical location.

MOYNIHAN: Again, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not removing any parts of history. I think there’s a question though of how do we balance acknowledging this, but also saying America is the greatest country on earth. We got rid of slavery.

We moved past that chapter.

PHILLIP: We’re the greatest country on earth and we enslaved people, human beings for hundreds of years. And that is a story. MOYNIHAN: And we’ve closed that chapter and we’ve moved forward.

PHILLIP: Hold on. But we cannot, hold on.

Just like we cannot move forward from the Holocaust, we don’t need to move forward from acknowledging the existence of hundreds of years of chattel slavery in this country. It’s not something that you ask of anybody else. As Van pointed out, why is it that black people need to forget and forgive when we’re simply asking to just document it accurately? That is all that is being asked.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.

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