Over the weekend, longshot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. courted the Libertarian vote with a speech at their national convention in Washington, D.C. While in attendance, Kennedy also sat down for an interview with right-wing streamer and conspiracy theorist Tim Pool for his YouTube program, Timcast IRL.

During the interview, Kennedy declared that he had a “visceral reaction against” removing Confederate monuments. He also reiterated his pledge to “shut down the border,” and vowed to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s failed “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Tim Pool, who is still masquerading as a “disaffected liberal,” told Kennedy that he agreed with a lot of what he said. However, he said he disagreed with Kennedy’s commemoration of Indigenous Peoples Day — a holiday that is usually observed in place of Columbus Day — before pivoting to a defense of Confederate monuments.

“I’m not a fan of the Confederacy by any means,” Pool insisted. “But tearing down the statues, unilaterally through activists’ efforts, was terrifying.”

Pool faulted activists for “tear[ing] down statues through violent force, without any kind of democratic process or legislative process.” He also pointed out that statues of abolitionists — such as Hans Christian Heg and Frederick Douglass — were vandalized and destroyed as well.

In 2020, a statue of Hans Christian Heg outside the Wisconsin state Capitol was torn down and beheaded by protesters who were likely unfamiliar with his backstory. One of the protesters, who used his car to help pull the statue down, was sentenced to six months in jail and apologized in court.

And a statue of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, NY was “torn from its base” and “dumped some 50 feet away, where it was discovered near a river gorge.” No arrests were made and the motivation for the vandalism remains unclear, although a former president of the NAACP speculated that it was retaliation for the removal of Confederate monuments.

Kennedy told Pool that he agreed with him about Confederate statues, remarking that it was not a “good, healthy thing for any culture to erase its history.”

One of Pool’s usual panelists, Hannah Claire Brimelow — daughter of white nationalists Peter and Lydia Brimelow — then interrupted to ask about the statue of Robert E. Lee which once stood in Charlottesville, VA. Much to the chagrin of white supremacists, the statue was melted down last year at an unidentified foundry.

“I have a visceral reaction against the attacks on those statues,” Kennedy said. “I mean, I grew up, you know, in Virginia. I know that, you know, that there were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves. And, you know, I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it.”

He added that “we should celebrate the good qualities of everybody,” and that Confederate General Robert E. Lee “had extraordinary qualities of leadership.”

Brimelow also asked Kennedy whether or not he would “end birthright citizenship” — something that is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and which the president cannot unilaterally change. Kennedy replied that he wasn’t sure and “would have to look at that.” But he did reiterate his previous pledge to “shut down the border.”

Kennedy explained that, in order to do so, he would “complete the 27 gaps in the [border] wall,” place sensory devices and cameras on the border, and reinstate Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy which forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were adjudicated in U.S. immigration courts.

As The Texas Tribune noted, the organization Human Rights First “recorded 1,544 cases of killings, rapes and kidnappings of migrants who were forced to remain in Mexico” between the policy’s January 2019 launch and its January 2021 suspension by the Biden administration. Moreover, the Mexican government has expressed opposition to the policy’s renewal.