By Dan Catchpole
July 5 (Reuters) - Federal officials had no reason to stop a white supremacist group’s July 4 rally in Washington because of free speech protections, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Sunday.
Hundreds of masked Patriot Front members who marched through the nation’s capital on Independence Day on Saturday did nothing illegal, Burgum told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. Although the organization’s white supremacist, anti-immigrant ideology is “nothing that I could possibly agree with,” Burgum said, it is protected free speech, even if it “makes democracy messy.”
Protesters on Washington’s National Mall who criticize President Donald Trump enjoy the same rights, “yet they’re allowed to go on because of free speech in our country,” Burgum said.
Patriot Front itself has criticized democracy. A manifesto on the group’s website says, “Democracy has failed this once great nation,” and a “hard reset” is needed to “return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers,” identifying them as European settlers.
The Patriot Front members marched to drummers near the U.S. Capitol and the Union Station transit center, before taking Metro trains to a District of Columbia suburb.
Burgum declined to say whether he condemned Patriot Front or would recommend that Trump condemn it. He downplayed the group’s march as an aberration among July 4 events commemorating the country’s 250th anniversary.
The Cabinet official also spoke about the Trump administration’s renovation work throughout Washington. In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Burgum said the Trump administration already has fixed dozens of monuments and fountains in Washington.
“When we look in context, President Trump set out to make D.C. safe and beautiful,” Burgum said. “He’s done that.”
One of the highest-profile projects has been a controversial $14.7 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, which had algae growth, peeling surface material and visible deterioration just weeks after the rehabilitation work was completed.
Burgum repeated Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that vandals damaged the pool’s new liner, using box cutters to make gashes hundreds of feet long. The company that renovated the pool under a no-bid contract also will handle the repairs “because they did a fantastic job” with the remake, Burgum told CNN.
(Reporting by Dan Catchpole in Seattle and Michelle Conlin in New York; Editing by Sergio Non and Jonathan Oatis)
