LA Times article calls to cancel 'Star-Spangled Banner,' replace it with 'Lean on Me'
Brewer Group CEO and former NFL player Jack Brewer reacts on 'Fox & Friends.'
“Instead of us tearing things down, let's add,” former NFL player Jack Brewer told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, reacting to the growing calls to remove statues and monuments across the country sparked over the death of George Floyd.
Brewer, CEO of the Brewer Group and advisory board member for Black Voices for Trump, made the comments as Hofstra University, located on Long Island, N.Y., has relocated the Thomas Jefferson statue from the front of the student center to an academic building amid renewed calls for its removal, according to LIHerald.com.
Hofstra University student activists called for the removal of the statue from the campus because they said the third American president represents racism and slavery. Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, reportedly enslaved more than 600 Black people throughout his life.
“We really should be looking at how we can learn from Thomas Jefferson's role in America and how we can add statues of so many prominent African-Americans and people of all races, colors, and sexes,” Brewer said.
He went on to say, “Add these folks to these campuses.”
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“Who was the first Black student to go to Hofstra? Who was the first woman to break that barrier? Those type of people should also be celebrated instead of us tearing things down,” he continued.
Host Brian Kilmeade asked Brewer, “Why now are we demanding perfection from monuments, plaques and statues?”
“Because people are fixated on this,” Brewer said in response. “They want to feel like they have made a change, they want to erase the history of our nation.”
He warned that “we got to be careful” because “if you erase your history, you are likely to repeat it.”
Brewer added, “We need to teach our children about these folks and teach these children the good, the bad [and] the ugly, but more importantly embrace our history.”
Brewer made the comments one day after an op-ed from The Los Angeles Times raised eyebrows for calling on "The Star-Spangled Banner" to be canceled as the national anthem and replaced with the song “Lean on Me.”
When Kilmeade asked Brewer if “this a good idea,” he said, “I don't know about ‘Lean on Me.’”
“It's a great song, but for a national anthem? It sounds a little soft to be honest with you,” he continued. “I like it for a lot of other reasons.”
He went on to note that if the national anthem were to be changed there is a “way to do it in America.”
“We have a Constitution, we have a legal process that allows you to vote on these type of things,” Brewer said. “I think at some point in our country we have to remember what makes us so strong and that is our history and our Constitution. It's the reason why slaves are actually free, it's the reason why schools are integrated and it's the reason why right now you’re seeing us be able to fight for so many rights like school choice, fighting against all these late-term abortions and so many other issues that have oppressed the born and the unborn.”
He added, “Let's wake up and realize that … the reason why our country is the desire of folks all over the world is because we have a system that we can vote things in and out.”
Brewer urged people to “take the proper protocols to make those things happen if folks are really that passionate about it.”
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The call to replace the national anthem comes amid a cultural shift following the May 25 death of Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd, a Black man, after a White police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
Fox News’ Lukas Mikelionis and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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