Out of all the dumb things Mitch Landrieu has said, this is probably the dumbest yet. He told reporters today when he was asked about the city’s costs to remove the monuments that the monuments forced people to move out of New Orleans.

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“I will say this for the people that are interested in the costs. The cultural, economic, and spiritual loss to the city for having those statues up that have run people out of the city. The great migration that sent some of our best and brightest to place across the country that we don’t have the benefit of has been incredible.” said Landrieu.

Really, Mitch? Confederate statues were why New Orleans’s “best and brightest” left the city? How come those statues didn’t scare people from coming into the city after Katrina?

Here are possible reasons that Mitch Landrieu rejected for people leaving New Orleans

• Crime rates which has made the city one of the most dangerous in the world
• Streets that are nearly impossible to drive on
• Terrible infrastructure in general
• Public schools that trapped generations in a school to prison pipeline
• Lack of employment opportunities for professionals
• Third world levels of political corruption
• An overall poor quality of life in the city and surrounding areas

It wasn’t any or all of those things. Those things did not force people to move to surrounding parishes or out of the state. Instead, Robert E. Lee forced people to move out of state. I’ll put it this way, if someone moved out of New Orleans because of Confederate monuments, they were not among the “best and brightest.”

Funny how Atlanta has turned alright, even with Stone Mountain nearby.

I get that the statues are Mitch’s legacy (mostly because he hasn’t accomplished anything else), but he shouldn’t think that his critics are stupid. Only an idiot believes that 100+ year old statues made people move out of New Orleans.