President Donald Trump is echoing a Republican congressman in calling for the removal of a peace vigil that has been outside the White House for seven presidents.

"Take it down. Take it down today," Trump told reporters Friday at the White House .

Trump was asked about the vigil, considered the country's longest continuous act of political protest after it was founded in 1981 by William Thomas, during an Oval Office press conference convened for him to announce he was changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and that he would host next year's Group of 20 Leaders Summit at his golf course in Miami after an earlier proposal to do so in 2020 were scrapped because of ethics concerns.

But the president was asked about the vigil in Lafayette Square u

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