U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) has been accused of racism and white nationalism after he gave a speech in which he declared that pilgrims and George Washington’s Continental Army “fought” for and “built this country for us” as a “birthright.”

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference, Schmitt said the pilgrims and army “believed they were fighting for a nation, a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” adding, “They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us,” he declared. “They built this country for us. America, in all its glory is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, it’s our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all.”

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He then denounced “new people” who “believe they can build a new America” by “changing the stories we tell about ourselves,” The New Civil Rights Movement reported.

George Washington’s Continental Army included an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 free and enslaved Black men who served in racially integrated units. However, one can hardly say that the country “belongs” to the white colonialists who would later form the earliest states. In reality, white colonists slaughtered the Native Americans who lived on the land that is now the United States, and Black slaves majorly contributed to building the nation’s capital and economy through their unpaid and involuntary labor.

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Our ancestors would be astonished to learn that they were fighting for a “proposition.”

They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants.

America belongs to us, and only us.

If we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist. pic.twitter.com/MBqoP2xNZN

— Senator Eric Schmitt (@SenEricSchmitt) September 2, 2025

In response to his speech, MSNBC/NBC News political analyst Cornell Belcher wrote via X, “This is ignorant. This is also textbook white nationalism. And by the way, fun fact, you’re ancestors weren’t the only ones who built this country so f**k off.”

Journalist Roland Martin wrote. “This is 100% RACIST. No shock that a member of the @SenateGOP would say this. And not one mainstream network will call this trash out.”

Schmitt cosponsored a bill to slash a wildly successful, international HIV-prevention program. As Missouri’s Attorney General, he signed onto an amicus brief that argued against the inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals under workplace discrimination bans.

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