Mike Pence Doesn't Want to Admit He Supports Confederate Monuments

Vice President Mike Pence is trying to have it both ways on the controversy over Confederate monuments, saying he supports "more monuments, not less" and that those who want to remove them are trying to "erase history."

In an interview that aired today on Fox & Friends, host Ainsley Earhardt asked Pence how he feels about the call to remove statues of Confederate figures from the U.S. Capitol and elsewhere. He said he agrees with Donald Trump that monuments on public property should not be brought down by citizens acting on their own, as has happened in Durham, N.C., and other locations, but that "communities can have conversations" about the matter. The conversation about removing a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public park in Charlottesville, Va., was what led to a white supremacist rally there.

"What we have to walk away from is the desire to erase parts of history just in the name of some contemporary political cause," Pence continued, adding, "I'm someone who believes in more monuments, not less monuments. What we ought to do is, we ought to remember our history, but we also ought to celebrate the progress that we've made since that history."

"When I walked back in 2010 across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis arm in arm and we remembered Bloody Sunday and the extraordinary progress of the civil rights movement, I can't help but think that rather than pulling down monuments, as some are wont to do, rather than tearing down monuments that have graced our cities all across this country for years, we ought to have been building more monuments," Pence went on. We ought to be celebrating the men and women who've helped our nation move toward a more perfect union and tell the whole story of America."

The annual march across the bridge, which links Selma and Montgomery, Ala., commemorates a 1965 civil rights march led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in which activists including Lewis, now a congressman, were beaten by police. The bridge is named for a Confederate general who became a Ku Klux Klan leader. Lewis and others have defended keeping the bridge's name, saying America must confront its history of racism.

Pence also said he supported the right of states to choose monuments that will represent them in the Capitol's Statuary Hall; states get to submit two, but Congress has the final say on what stays. Eight states have one Confederate monument in the hall, and two -- South Carolina and Mississippi -- have both of their statues representing Confederate figures, according to National Geographic. The hall's purpose is to honor illustrious citizens of each state.

Watch the Fox & Friends clip below.