Statues DO represent history, the question is how you interpret the history they represent? And do they represent the good parts of history or the bad part? Do does the way they represent history do history justice?
People are generally tempted to have a one-sided view on history. And that includes statues. Like it or not, but the statues do depict historical persons. If the persons deserve the honor to be remembered in the form of a statue, that is another story.
Now a nice thing to note is that people are not always thinking about statues. In the Netherlands some statues appear to have been vandalized in the same manner with texts like "racists" and "slave drivers" and such, while some vandalized statues actually depict people who were very fierce oposers to either slavery or racism or both.
Stating that statues do not tell anything about history is a wrong approach on things. The question is rather if they represent a portion of history you should be proud of.
Trump is right about one thing. Removing all evidence of history will only lead to repeating the tragic mistakes of history. Of course, the reason I don't "honor" him for those words is because they sound very hypocrite out of *his* mouth.
If we really speak of statues solely placed out of racist motivations, in order to honor racists as heroes, I guess we do have a point when it comes to removal... At least from public squares and such. Placing those statues in a museum accompanied with a plaque telling the full story about them should then still be an option. Thanks to statues and paintings, historical people, either good or bad, have a face even years after they passed away. If you wanna honor that face or feel revolted of that... That's a different matter.
