“Duck Dynasty” star Korie Robertson thinks President Donald Trump needs to make a change — and said she’s hopeful that he can.
“I wish that he would make a change,” Robertson told CNN’s Jamie Gangel in an interview that aired on CNN Thursday afternoon. “I don’t want to look at regrets, and say I wish this happened a different way.”
“I just know that where we are right now, I feel like — the reason I’m speaking out now is because I feel like President Trump needs to make a change,” she said.
She added later: “I’m hopeful. I think people can change.”
Robertson is the wife of famed CEO of Duck Commander and Buck Commander, Willie Robertson, whose family and business are chronicled in the “Duck Dynasty” reality series on A&E.
Her husband spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention in July 2016.
“Willie was outspoken and supported Trump from the beginning; and I was not. So, we had a lot of discussions about it. And we could agree to disagree, as well,” Korie Robertson said.
Robertson said she hadn’t made the decision on who to vote for until the day of the election, and her choice ultimately came down to Hillary Clinton’s views on abortion.
CNN spoke to Robertson days after she retweeted former President Barack Obama’s widely shared Twitter message on the day of the violence at a white supremacist rally August 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Obama tweeted a quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” that said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Obama’s post was the most liked in Twitter history.
“There’s so much divisiveness on Twitter, on social media — so many people fighting — that to see something that was positive and such truth, it just felt like light was winning,” Robertson said. “And I thought, I’m just going to retweet that as well.”
Seven months into the Trump presidency, her message to Trump is to “stop fighting.”
“It’s exhausting. Why are you still fighting? What are you trying to prove at this point? Let’s just come together and be a leader that unifies, that brings people together. And, that’s what we need right now. I had hoped that once President Trump got elected, that that’s what he would do,” she said.
Thinks Confederate monuments should come down
The country has seen heightened racial tensions following the Charlottesville violence. Trump was widely criticized following the event for his response to it.
The rally happened in part to protest the pending removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E Lee. Since then, a number of local governments across the country have decided to take down Confederate monuments.
Robertson, a Louisiana resident, said she agreed that such statues should come down.
“We do need to remember our history. It’s important to remember our history, so that we don’t repeat it,” she said. “But we don’t need to revere that part of our history. And I think the statues do tell that story, that maybe we’re somehow idolizing or revering that part of our history, when it’s not really a part of our history that we need to be idolizing or revering.”
“I live in the South, so I see it. And there are things that I do bother me. I have never particularly liked the rebel flag. That does bother me. But as far as the statues, I hadn’t thought that much about it. But now that this has come up, I’m like, ‘Whoa, how have we not thought about this? How have we not realized this?'”
She added that she thought Trump needs to make it clear he is not speaking on behalf of various white supremacist groups in order to unify the country.
“I’m not saying that Donald Trump is a racist at this point, but the words he’s using is somehow identifying with that group. And somehow they’re thinking that he’s accepting them,” she said. “They think that he’s speaking on their behalf.”
