Fox News Hosts Whine Jefferson's Monticello Makes People Feel Bad About Slavery
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Fox News dedicated a segment on Sunday to complaining that Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation makes visitors feel bad by educating them on true aspects of American history.
“Fox & Friends” weekend hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy and Pete Hegseth brought up an article published in the New York Post Saturday that accused the Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the Founding Father of “going woke” and offering visitors “a harangue on the horrors of slavery.”
Jefferson owned more than 600 people in his lifetime, including 400 who were enslaved at Monticello. The estate is owned by the nonprofit Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which works to preserve its history and educate people about the third American president.
According to Hegseth, Monticello is now all about “how terrible Thomas Jefferson was because he was a slave owner” and presents a “one-sided point of view that makes Thomas Jefferson a bad guy in his own home.”
Campos-Duffy complained that there is a sign in the museum that questions if Jefferson’s line in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” is being lived up to in the U.S. today.
She also took issue with an international bestselling anti-racism book for sale in the gift shop.
“All of these sort of books that are damning of America and suggesting that we’re still a racist country are for sale in the gift shop,” she added.
In another segment, Campos-Duffy argued that there were slaves throughout human history, but people shouldn’t be “ashamed” of leaders who owned them.
“I get that. It’s a terrible history we should talk about, but we should not feel guilty or ashamed of our leaders when we go and visit the people who brought us the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. You leave feeling that way,” she said.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation has owned and restored Monticello since 1923, and provides resources on many aspects of Jefferson’s life and writings, with a vision to “bring history forward into national and global dialogues.”
In response to the New York Post’s article, a Monticello spokesperson said: “Our goal is to present an honest, inclusive history of Monticello in all its aspects as well as Jefferson’s contributions to the founding of the country,”
Hegseth accused the people behind the organization of being “all leftists.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
