Clay Aiken, a runner-up on "American Idol" and a former candidate for Congress in North Carolina, said that states should remove Confederate monuments.
"I think we can't forget history, but I think they belong in a museum… Germany doesn't put up statues to its Nazi dead," Aiken said in an interview with Mediaite.
He said that when growing up, he never took issue with a Confederate monument in his hometown of Raleigh, but said visitors from out of town were often taken aback.
"I never thought about it because it was just always there, but everybody who comes into town looks at it and is very uncomfortable, whether they are white or black or purple. They are always bothered by that statue," Aiken said in the interview.
The former "Idol" star appeared on President Donald Trump's reality show, "Celebrity Apprentice," and said his opinion of Trump has always been poor. "He has a 1960s view of gender and race . . . he likes black people if they stay in their neighborhood," Aiken said, according to Mediaite.
Aiken noted that at one time, he had defended Trump against charges of racism. On Tuesday, he apologized for that in a tweet that has gotten more than 36,000 retweets.
However, Trump was a "nice guy" when Aiken worked with him on the "Apprentice" show, Aiken said in July on the North Carolina News Observer podcast.