July 5, 2020 | 2:31pm | Updated July 5, 2020 | 2:31pm
Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said it means “a lot” to have his father, the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, included in President Trump’s proposed national garden remembering scores of American heroes.
“It would mean a lot. I didn’t see that one coming … and it was really touching to hear. I hope it would mean a lot to the American people, too,” Scalia said on “Fox News Sunday.”
”We need heroes. We need to admire our forebears and recognize what is great and good in our past. That is what the president is emphasizing right now,” he added.
The president concluded his speech Friday night at Mount Rushmore by announcing he will sign an executive order creating the “National Garden of American Heroes,” an outdoor park featuring the statues of the “greatest Americans to ever live.”
Along with Scalia, the monuments would commemorate a range of famous Americans, including John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Douglass and Dolley Madison.
It comes after the president signed an executive order last month pertaining to the Veterans’ Memorial Preservation and Recognition Act that would allow people convicted of knocking down statues or defacing monuments to be hit with sentences of 10 years in prison.
The protests that have spread across the country since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25 have included calls for police and justice reforms.
Some of the protesters have turned their anger on statues of historical figures, toppling them or painting them with graffiti.
They also want US military bases that bear the names of Confederate soldiers to be renamed.
