Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy said that Confederate monuments should come down and denounced the Ku Klux Klan as “scum.” 

“I look at those Southern leaders — that rebellion cost hundreds of thousands of American lives in the Civil War,” Duffy said. “They were fighting to keep people enslaved. I don’t honor what they were fighting for.”

The debate about Confederate monuments heightened after violence in erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, two weeks ago, where white supremacists and neo-Nazis protested the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

President Donald Trump said after the violence that there were “very fine people” and “both sides” were to blame for the violence.

Trump also criticized Confederate monuments being removed, saying U.S. history and culture was being “ripped apart.”

Duffy, who is considered a strong ally of the president, made the comments after a roundtable on drug abuse in Wausau, the Wausau Daily Herald reported. He said that communities should decide “whether they should have those statues up, whether they should be removed to museums or to other parks.”

The Wisconsin Republican also denounced the Ku Klux Klan as “scum of the earth.”

Duffy added that everyone should be able to voice their views, “even horrible speech like that which the KKK was espousing during that protest.”

“When people come with clubs, though, and they come with helmets, they’re not coming in peace,” he said