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White House chief of staff John Kelly waded into the debate over Confederate statues late Monday, stating in an interview that the civil war was prompted by an inability to compromise, while suggesting both sides acted in “good faith”.

Speaking with Fox News in a rare interview, Kelly described Confederate general Robert E Lee as “an honorable man” while discussing the recent push to remove monuments and symbols memorializing the pro-slavery Confederacy.

“There are certain things in history that were good, and other things that were not so good,” Kelly told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

Kelly went on to say that Lee, the general of the Confederate army during the American civil war, “was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state”.



“It was always loyalty to state first back in those days,” said Kelly, while adding:

But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the civil war. And men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had to make their stand.”

Kelly’s comments echoed those made by Donald Trump in the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, when a white supremacist drove his car into counter protesters, leaving one woman dead and several others injured.

The president sparked controversy in the days that followed by blaming violence “on both sides”, appearing to put neo-Nazis and white supremacists on equal footing with those demonstrating against them.