The Fort Bragg Bait and Switch

Trump and Pete Hegseth are so committed to maintaining white supremacy that they restored the military base’s previous name, which honored a Confederate general — but there’s a twist.

Screenshot via YouTube

Imagine being so wedded to whiteness, white supremacy and racism that you go out of your way to circumvent a law that prohibits you from naming a military base after members of the Confederacy.

In case you missed it, Pete Hegseth — Trump’s new secretary of defense — signed a memo Monday that changed the name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, making good on a Trump campaign promise to restore the names of nine southern military bases back to their racist roots. There’s a twist, however.

The original naming of Fort Bragg was in “honor” of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, a traitor who participated in the killing of American soldiers, lost critical battles and was not respected by the men who served under him. Bragg was a loyalist to Jefferson Davis and actively fought for the secession of southern states.

Ft. Bragg was renamed Ft. Liberty in June 2023, following the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress. The law includes a clause that states military bases cannot bear the name of anyone who voluntarily participated in the Confederacy. Donald Trump attempted to veto the law, but Congress was able to override him.

From Stars and Stripes:

But about one year before Congress approved that controversial plan, a little-noticed amendment included in the 2020 NDAA effectively barred Pentagon officials from naming any military assets for anyone and anything associated with the Confederacy. The language in the 2020 NDAA, which Trump signed into law in December 2019, entitled “Prohibition on names related to the Confederacy,” received little media attention at the time, but legal experts and Naming Commission members believe it ensures Congress would have to change the existing law to allow Trump to revert Army bases to their former, Confederate-linked names.

Pete Hegseth previously said that removing the Confederate names from bases “broke with a long tradition that links generations of soldiers who served at those posts,” according to Stars and Stripes.

Trump said something similar, indicating that renaming the bases disrespects the veterans who trained there — especially those who died in battle.

In June 2024, Hegseth told The Everyday Warrior Podcast, “We should change it back because legacy matters. My uncle served at Bragg. I served at Bragg. It breaks a generational link.” Since the base could not be named after Braxton Bragg, Hegseth and/or his people did their homework and went looking for someone else with the last name Bragg in an effort to restore the name.

Enter Private First Class Roland L. Bragg, a veteran of World War II who earned the Silver Star and a Purple Heart in the Battle of the Bulge.

Hegseth apparently cared so much about Pfc. Bragg that he didn’t bother to tell his family the base was being renamed after him. Bragg’s daughter, Debra Sokoll, told NPR she had only learned of the name change moments before they called her because another reporter had called to ask about it.

The Army left a message for the family on Monday night — after the renaming was made official — but had not provided the family with any details, according to NPR.

Renaming the base in 2023 cost the Army $9.3 million and that does not include the expenses of renaming streets and building on and around the base.

For an administration that is actively pretending to try to cut unnecessary government spending, this name change seems rather counterintuitive.

While we are thankful to Pfc. Bragg for his incredible service, I think we can be honest here in admitting that this name change has absolutely nothing to do with him and everything to do with Orange Joosolini and his band of idiots attempting to undo everything that happened during the administrations that came before him.

They want to set the clock and the country back to Jim Crow — a time when many of these bases were given the names of Confederate dunces as a way of appeasing southern people who like their country the way they like their milk: spoiled and white.

This has everything to do with upholding whiteness, white supremacy, and racism, and nothing to do with honoring the veterans who served on these bases.

Once again, if they actually cared about veterans and service members, they wouldn’t be so determined to name military installations after people who killed active-duty servicemembers in the name of “AmeriKKKa.”

Welcome to Trump 2.0, where being white is more important than anything else.