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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth marked his first day on the job by hinting that military bases renamed under the Biden administration because they referenced Confederate officers would revert to their original names.
“Every moment that I’m here, I’m thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, in Germany, in Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, on missile defense sites and aircraft carriers,” Hegseth told reporters as he arrived at the Pentagon on Monday morning. “Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.”
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged that he would revert nine southern Army posts that were initially named after officers who fought for the South in the Civil War back to their original monikers. While the switch happened in 2023, under former President Joe Biden’s watch, the effort to rid the bases of their Confederate-linked names began during Trump’s first term in office amid a nationwide racial reckoning following George Floyd’s 2020 murder.
“Here’s what we do: We get elected — I’m doing it,” Trump told supporters last October in a town hall event near Fort Liberty. “I’m doing it… we did win two world wars from Fort Bragg, right? So, this is not a time to be changing names, and we’re going to do that. We’re going to do everything we can, and we’re going to get it back.”
Until it was changed to Fort Liberty, the North Carolina military base — which is the Army’s largest post — had been named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. Fort Moore, which is now the only U.S. base named after a married couple, had originally been christened after Confederate General Henry L. Benning.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host who was barely confirmed on Friday night amid allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual assault, has also long been critical of the name changes and called the effort a “sham” while urging government officials to “change it back.” Meanwhile, Trump’s promise to bring back the Confederate-linked names of these bases has been met with pushback.
“Critics of Trump’s campaign promise to return Confederate-linked names to those bases said it would revert the military to honoring treasonous Confederate soldiers who killed American troops and undo a Congress-mandated process that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars,” Stars and Stripes reported this month. “It would also strip honors from the Army leaders and war heroes for whom the installations — except for Fort Liberty — were renamed, said retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, who served more than three decades as an armor officer and later as a professor and leader of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.”
Conservative media celebrated Hegseth’s Monday morning comments about the bases. Outkick, a Fox-affiliated right-wing “sports” site, boasted that the ex-Fox & Friends Weekend host had “owned the libs” with his remarks.
“Will some people freak out at Hegseth’s comments? I’m sure some people will,” writer David Hookstead noted. “Let them scream into the void. It’s not going to stop Hegseth and others from pushing forward, and it absolutely shouldn’t. It’s a new day in America, and the era of woke nonsense is in its last stages of dying.”
The new defense secretary’s reference to the old Confederate names of military posts comes as Trump has been on something of a renaming spree in his first few days in office, which he claimed in an executive order was to “restore names that honor American greatness.” This has resulted in the president reverting Mt. Denali in Alaska to its original Mt. McKinley name while declaring the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” a name other countries refuse to acknowledge.
Now that he is officially in charge of the Pentagon, Hegseth has vowed to enact a slew of changes that coincide with the administration’s so-called “War on Woke.” Besides honoring the losing side in the Civil War, Hegseth wants to rid the military of transgender troops, roll back diversity, equity and inclusion programs, reinstate soldiers who were discharged for refusing the Covid vaccine, and use the military to enforce the administration’s border and immigration policies.
Just as Hegseth was beginning his new role, the Air Force said it had removed training material referring to the famed Tuskegee Airmen and female World War II pilots after a delay to meet Trump’s rollback of DEI initiatives, only for Hegseth to quickly say the move was “immediately reversed” amid blowback.
Read More: Trump’s renaming spree continues as Hegseth refers to Fort Liberty as ‘Fort Bragg’
