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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Is Trying to Hide the Cost of Renovating His New Air Force One
How much will it cost to renovate the Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar into the next Air Force One? That's classified information. But a recent $934 million transfer of funds to a Pentagon budget may hold a clue. The New York Times reported that this 'transfer' to an unnamed classified project described in a Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill likely includes the cost of renovating the gifted plane into a lavish gold-accented flying palace for President Trump. The funds were moved to a budget dedicated to updating America's ground-based nuclear missiles, and Air Force officials told the paper that at least some of the funds for the renovations will come from the nuclear modernization project. Making the project even more absurd, because the renovations will take one or two years to complete, Trump will only fly in the plane as president for a short time until he leaves office and the plane is ostensibly transferred to his presidential library in 2029 — at least that is what Trump has said will happen. (Unless, that is, Trump finds a way to extend his time in office beyond this four year term, as he has often hinted at, though that would be extremely unconstitutional.) Among the improvements to the plane are upgrades to its communications systems and engines as well as the addition of antimissile systems. Plus, U.S. intelligence will need to identify and remove any covert listening devices that Qatar may have embedded in the plane's walls. Finally, the plane will be treated to similar internal decor to the Oval Office, which Trump has outfitted with tacky gold accents. Trump pursued the gift from Qatar, he said, because Boeing is years behind schedule to deliver two new planes to serve as Air Force Ones, a project that has already cost $4 billion. Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink testified to Congress in June about the cost to renovate the Qatar plane. 'I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,' he said. 'But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we'd have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,' ahead of Boeing's scheduled delivery of its new Air Force Ones. 'So it wouldn't be anywhere near that.' He added, 'We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million.' But engineers and Air Force experts familiar with this kind of work shed doubt on that price tag, and members of Congress have voiced worries that Trump will want to use the plane quickly, and he will push the Air Force to complete the work before installing proper safety mechanisms. While the Pentagon will reveal the price to modernize America's ground-base nuclear missiles, it declined to share with the Times just how much the plane upgrades will cost. 'The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,' Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen told the paper. 'The security implications of accepting a private plane from a foreign nation as Air Force One and the resulting ethical concerns a gift of that sizes creates were already significant.' She also expressed concern that 'this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane,' which means the U.S. is 'weakening our credibility to fund a vanity project for President Trump.' More from Rolling Stone Israel Seizes Aid Flotilla Bringing Baby Formula, Medicine to Gaza Oklahoma's Trump-Loving, Bible-Thumping Superintendent Faces Porn Probe The Democratic Party's Brand Is Cooked Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Trump Administration Live Updates: President to Meet With Top E.U. Official as Threat of Trade War Looms
News Analysis The Boeing 747-8 from Qatar at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida after President Trump took a tour of the plane in February. Renovation will begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. President Trump makes no secret of his displeasure over the cost of renovating the Federal Reserve headquarters — around $2.5 billion, or even higher by the president's accounting. But getting the White House to discuss another of Washington's expensive renovation projects, the cost of refurbishing a 'free' Air Force One from Qatar, is quite another matter. Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where 'black budgets' are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive. Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles. In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a 'transfer' to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.) Qatar's defense minister and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the final memorandum of understanding a few weeks ago, paving the way for the renovation to begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. The document was reported earlier by The Washington Post. Mr. Trump's plane probably won't fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the Qatari gift — improved with the latest communications and in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential library after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said. Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Mr. Trump's government dealings and business ties with the Qataris, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But the president himself said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers. 'I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,' the president said in May. 'I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, 'No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.'' It is free in the sense that a used car handed over by a neighbor looking to get it out of his driveway is free. In this case, among the many modifications will be hardened communications, antimissile systems and afterburners to take the president quickly to safety as one of the older Air Force Ones did on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States. And there is the delicate matter of ridding the jet of any hidden electronic listening devices that U.S. officials suspect may be embedded in the walls. Image Mr. Trump talks to reporters aboard Air Force One in May. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times Then, of course, it has to be stuffed with the luxuries — and gold trim — with which the 47th president surrounds himself, whether he is in the Oval Office or in the air. The jet's upper deck has a lounge and a communications center, while the main bedroom can be converted into a flying sick bay in a medical emergency. So it's no surprise that one of Washington's biggest guessing games these days is assessing just where the price tag will end up, on top of the $4 billion already being spent on the wildly-behind-schedule presidential planes that Boeing was supposed to deliver last year. It was those delays that led Mr. Trump to look for a gift. Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington's long-running effort to rebuild America's aging, leaky, ground-launched nuclear missile system. The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities and communications built to withstand both nuclear and cyber attack. By the time Mr. Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81 percent, to $140 billion and climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America's nuclear deterrent. And that was the number before the Air Force announced a few months ago that it would have to dig all new silos across Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, because the old Minuteman silos were leaking and crumbling. The first of the Minutemans were installed 55 years ago, when Richard Nixon was president and Leonid Brezhnev was inside the Kremlin. Washington and Moscow had a combined total of more than 30,000 nuclear weapons pointed at each other. (Today it is closer to 3,100.) The good news is that in the first Trump administration, the Air Force got rid of the command-and-control systems that still used 8-inch floppy disks, proving that the so-called deep state can get something done when it digs, well, deep. Some nuclear strategists argue that the ground-based nuclear weapons do not need to be replaced at all; they are far more vulnerable than weapons traveling under the sea on stealthy submarines, or that can be loaded on bombers. But the Pentagon doesn't want to part with a third of the nuclear 'triad,' and the silos and their command posts are big employers in the rural West. They serve another function in the second Trump administration. The modernization program has proved to be the perfect thing if you were determined to hide how much you are spending on an airplane, especially one equipped to order up a nuclear strike, if needed. Image Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, testifying before the House Committee on Armed Services in June. Credit... Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press In testimony before Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, said that he thought the cost of the Air Force One renovations would be manageable. 'I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,' he said. 'But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we'd have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,' before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. 'So it wouldn't be anywhere near that.' 'We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,' he said. If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers and Air Force experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of Congress express concern that Mr. Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane. When asked last week, the Air Force said it simply could not discuss the cost — or anything else about the plane — because it's classified. (For collectors of such bureaucratic evasions, yes, the Air Force is willing to discuss the cost of building a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, but not the cost of renovating the president's aircraft.) Image Mr. Trump disembarking Air Force One in Scotland on Friday. The president is expected to redecorate the new plane with his signature gold trim. Credit... Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times Only at the Pentagon could someone reprogram $934 million and expect no one to notice. The coffers were refilled with the passage of the budget reconciliation bill several weeks ago, budget officials say. 'The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,' said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. 'The security implications of accepting a private plane from a foreign nation as Air Force One and the resulting ethical concerns a gift of that sizes creates were already significant.' But it was more worrisome, Ms. Shaheen said, that 'this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane.' In doing so, she said, 'we're weakening our credibility to fund a vanity project for President Trump.'
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
What Will It Cost to Renovate the ‘Free' Air Force One? Don't Ask.
President Trump makes no secret of his displeasure over the cost of renovating the Federal Reserve headquarters — around $2.5 billion, or even higher by the president's accounting. But getting the White House to discuss another of Washington's expensive renovation projects, the cost of refurbishing a 'free' Air Force One from Qatar, is quite another matter. Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where 'black budgets' are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive. Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles. In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a 'transfer' to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Mr. Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.) Qatar's defense minister and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the final memorandum of understanding a few weeks ago, paving the way for the renovation to begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. The document was reported earlier by The Washington Post. Mr. Trump's plane probably won't fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the Qatari gift — improved with the latest communications and in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential library after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said. Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Mr. Trump's government dealings and business ties with the Qataris, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But the president himself said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers. 'I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,' the president said in May. 'I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, 'No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.'' It is free in the sense that a used car handed over by a neighbor looking to get it out of his driveway is free. In this case, among the many modifications will be hardened communications, antimissile systems and afterburners to take the president quickly to safety as one of the older Air Force Ones did on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States. And there is the delicate matter of ridding the jet of any hidden electronic listening devices that U.S. officials suspect may be embedded in the walls. Then, of course, it has to be stuffed with the luxuries — and gold trim — with which the 47th president surrounds himself, whether he is in the Oval Office or in the air. The jet's upper deck has a lounge and a communications center, while the main bedroom can be converted into a flying sick bay in a medical emergency. So it's no surprise that one of Washington's biggest guessing games these days is assessing just where the price tag will end up, on top of the $4 billion already being spent on the wildly-behind-schedule presidential planes that Boeing was supposed to deliver last year. It was those delays that led Mr. Trump to look for a gift. Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington's long-running effort to rebuild America's aging, leaky, ground-launched nuclear missile system. The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities and communications built to withstand both nuclear and cyber attack. By the time Mr. Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81 percent, to $140 billion and climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America's nuclear deterrent. And that was the number before the Air Force announced a few months ago that it would have to dig all new silos across Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, because the old Minuteman silos were leaking and crumbling. The first of the Minutemans were installed 55 years ago, when Richard Nixon was president and Leonid Brezhnev was inside the Kremlin. Washington and Moscow had a combined total of more than 30,000 nuclear weapons pointed at each other. (Today it is closer to 3,100.) The good news is that in the first Trump administration, the Air Force got rid of the command-and-control systems that still used 8-inch floppy disks, proving that the so-called deep state can get something done when it digs, well, deep. Some nuclear strategists argue that the ground-based nuclear weapons do not need to be replaced at all; they are far more vulnerable than weapons traveling under the sea on stealthy submarines, or that can be loaded on bombers. But the Pentagon doesn't want to part with a third of the nuclear 'triad,' and the silos and their command posts are big employers in the rural West. They serve another function in the second Trump administration. The modernization program has proved to be the perfect thing if you were determined to hide how much you are spending on an airplane, especially one equipped to order up a nuclear strike, if needed. In testimony before Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, said that he thought the cost of the Air Force One renovations would be manageable. 'I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,' he said. 'But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we'd have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,' before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. 'So it wouldn't be anywhere near that.' 'We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,' he said. If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers and Air Force experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of Congress express concern that Mr. Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane. When asked last week, the Air Force said it simply could not discuss the cost — or anything else about the plane — because it's classified. (For collectors of such bureaucratic evasions, yes, the Air Force is willing to discuss the cost of building a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, but not the cost of renovating the president's aircraft.) Only at the Pentagon could someone reprogram $934 million and expect no one to notice. The coffers were refilled with the passage of the budget reconciliation bill several weeks ago, budget officials say. 'The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,' said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who serves on the Armed Services Committee. 'The security implications of accepting a private plane from a foreign nation as Air Force One and the resulting ethical concerns a gift of that sizes creates were already significant.' But it was more worrisome, Ms. Shaheen said, that 'this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane.' In doing so, she said, 'we're weakening our credibility to fund a vanity project for President Trump.'
The Guardian
20-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Pete Hegseth is skirting law by bringing back Confederate names of army bases
Since Donald Trump returned to office this year, his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ripped the new names off a series of US army bases and brought back their old traitorous Confederate names. His actions have angered Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, prompting a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by the Republican-controlled Congress last Tuesday. The GOP-led House of Representatives Armed Services Committee voted on 15 July to block Hegseth from renaming the bases after Confederates. Two Republicans voted with the Democrats on the committee to pass the measure, which was an amendment to the Pentagon's budget bill. 'What this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress,' said Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican representative who voted to stop Hegseth. Hegseth's move elicited bipartisan anger because it flouted the law; Congress passed legislation in January 2021 to create a commission to choose new names for the bases named for Confederates and mandated that its recommendations be implemented by the Pentagon. That law was passed over a veto by Trump in the final days of his first term, and the name changes were later implemented by the Pentagon during the Biden administration. The law is still on the books, and so in order to return to the old Confederate names, Hegseth has openly played games with their namesakes. The secretary claims he has renamed the bases after American soldiers from throughout US history who were not Confederates. But they all conveniently have the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes of the bases. For example, Fort Bragg is now supposedly named for Roland Bragg, who was an army paratrooper in the second world war; Fort Benning is now supposedly named for Fred Benning, a soldier who served in the army in the first world war. Before the House vote, Hegseth's efforts to skirt the law were also challenged in the Senate. In a hearing in June, Angus King, a senator from Maine, told Hegseth that he was returning the bases to the names of 'people who took up arms against their country on behalf of slavery'. Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon had found non-Confederates with the same names to stay within 'the limits of what Congress allowed us to do'. But during the same hearing, Hegseth briefly dropped the pretense that he wasn't returning to the original Confederate names. He argued that 'there is a legacy, a connection' for veterans with the old names. King replied that Hegseth's actions were 'an insult to the people of the United States'. Above all, Hegseth's actions show a troubling ignorance of the lives of the original Confederate namesakes; their easily-researched backgrounds reveal what terrible role models they make for modern American military personnel. Braxton Bragg was one of the most incompetent Confederate generals of the civil war. His subordinates repeatedly and clandestinely tried to get him fired, with one writing to the Confederate secretary of war that 'nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander'. Bragg finally lost his command after he was out-generaled by Union General Ulysses S Grant and his army was routed at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863. One of the few biographies written about him is entitled Braxton Bragg, the Most Hated Man in the Confederacy. And yet Bragg lives on today as the namesake of the largest and most important military base in the United States Army. Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina was originally built in 1918, as part of a rushed effort by the army to construct new bases after the United States entered the first world war. The site offered the army cheap and abundant land, and it quickly built a base and surrounding military reservation totaling 251 sq miles. Eager to win local white support, the army agreed to name the new base after a Confederate; Bragg was chosen because he was originally from North Carolina. By the time the base was built, the civil war had been over for more than 50 years, yet the south was still in the grips of the 'the Lost Cause' theory of the war, which romanticized the civil war and held that the south had fought for state's rights, not slavery, and that the Confederacy had fielded better officers and men and had only lost because of the overwhelming resources of the north. By 1918, when Bragg's name was attached to the base, the generation of Confederate officers who hated him were gone, along with the memory of his military blunders. That pattern held for a series of major bases built throughout the south during the first and second world wars. Fort Benning was also built in 1918 near Columbus, Georgia. At the request of the Columbus Rotary Club, the army named it for Henry Lewis Benning, who was best known as a pro-slavery political firebrand from Columbus who helped draft Georgia's ordinance of secession. Benning was one of the pre-eminent white supremacists of his day, and he openly admitted that his state seceded because of slavery, not states rights. In one speech, he said that his state seceded because of a 'deep conviction on the part of Georgia that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery … If things are allowed to go on as they are … we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it supposed that the white race will stand for that?' Benning served in the Confederate army, but it was his political role as a proponent of a southern slavocracy that first brought him fame and prominence. By the 21st century, there were still 10 army bases that were named for Confederates, and the Pentagon repeatedly resisted efforts to change their names, arguing that tradition outweighed the fact that the bases were named for traitors who had fought to preserve slavery. The Confederate base names were finally changed after the 2020 George Floyd protests; Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty, while Fort Benning became Fort Moore, named for Vietnam War hero Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Moore. (Mel Gibson played Hal Moore and Madeleine Stowe played Julia Moore in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.) But those new names didn't survive Trump's return to office. Hegseth hasn't stopped with army bases. The Pentagon has announced it will strip the name off the US navy ship Harvey Milk, which was named for the gay rights pioneer who was assassinated in 1978, and rename it for Oscar V Peterson, a sailor who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the second world war. But one thing is certain: Braxton Bragg's civil war contemporaries would be shocked to discover that a man so widely derided as a loser and a martinet during his lifetime is still at the center of a national debate 160 years after the war ended. During the war, one Confederate newspaper editor described him as a man with 'an iron hand and a wooden head'. Grant, the man who so badly beat Bragg during the war, took great pleasure in making fun of Bragg and his ridiculous behavior when he later wrote his memoirs. Grant recounted one infamous episode involving Bragg from the time before the civil war when both men served in the small, pre-war US army. 'On one occasion, when stationed at a post … (Bragg) was commanding one of the companies and at the same time acting as post quartermaster … As commander of the company he made a requisition upon the quartermaster – himself – for something he wanted. As quartermaster he declined to fill the requisition and endorsed on the back of it his reasons for so doing. As company commander he responded to this, urging that his requisition called for nothing but what he was entitled to, and that it was the duty of the quartermaster to fill it. As quartermaster he still persisted that he was right … Bragg referred the whole matter to the commanding officer of the post. The latter exclaimed: 'My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarrelling with yourself!' In his memoirs, Grant wrote that Bragg was 'naturally disputatious'. So maybe Braxton Bragg would fit in perfectly with Donald Trump after all.
The Guardian
20-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Pete Hegseth is skirting law by bringing back Confederate names of army bases
Since Donald Trump returned to office this year, his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ripped the new names off a series of US army bases and brought back their old traitorous Confederate names. His actions have angered Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, prompting a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by the Republican-controlled Congress last Tuesday. The GOP-led House of Representatives Armed Services Committee voted on 15 July to block Hegseth from renaming the bases after Confederates. Two Republicans voted with the Democrats on the committee to pass the measure, which was an amendment to the Pentagon's budget bill. 'What this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress,' said Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican representative who voted to stop Hegseth. Hegseth's move elicited bipartisan anger because it flouted the law; Congress passed legislation in January 2021 to create a commission to choose new names for the bases named for Confederates and mandated that its recommendations be implemented by the Pentagon. That law was passed over a veto by Trump in the final days of his first term, and the name changes were later implemented by the Pentagon during the Biden administration. The law is still on the books, and so in order to return to the old Confederate names, Hegseth has openly played games with their namesakes. The secretary claims he has renamed the bases after American soldiers from throughout US history who were not Confederates. But they all conveniently have the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes of the bases. For example, Fort Bragg is now supposedly named for Roland Bragg, who was an army paratrooper in the second world war; Fort Benning is now supposedly named for Fred Benning, a soldier who served in the army in the first world war. Before the House vote, Hegseth's efforts to skirt the law were also challenged in the Senate. In a hearing in June, Angus King, a senator from Maine, told Hegseth that he was returning the bases to the names of 'people who took up arms against their country on behalf of slavery'. Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon had found non-Confederates with the same names to stay within 'the limits of what Congress allowed us to do'. But during the same hearing, Hegseth briefly dropped the pretense that he wasn't returning to the original Confederate names. He argued that 'there is a legacy, a connection' for veterans with the old names. King replied that Hegseth's actions were 'an insult to the people of the United States'. Above all, Hegseth's actions show a troubling ignorance of the lives of the original Confederate namesakes; their easily-researched backgrounds reveal what terrible role models they make for modern American military personnel. Braxton Bragg was one of the most incompetent Confederate generals of the civil war. His subordinates repeatedly and clandestinely tried to get him fired, with one writing to the Confederate secretary of war that 'nothing but the hand of God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander'. Bragg finally lost his command after he was out-generaled by Union General Ulysses S Grant and his army was routed at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863. One of the few biographies written about him is entitled Braxton Bragg, the Most Hated Man in the Confederacy. And yet Bragg lives on today as the namesake of the largest and most important military base in the United States Army. Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina was originally built in 1918, as part of a rushed effort by the army to construct new bases after the United States entered the first world war. The site offered the army cheap and abundant land, and it quickly built a base and surrounding military reservation totaling 251 sq miles. Eager to win local white support, the army agreed to name the new base after a Confederate; Bragg was chosen because he was originally from North Carolina. By the time the base was built, the civil war had been over for more than 50 years, yet the south was still in the grips of the 'the Lost Cause' theory of the war, which romanticized the civil war and held that the south had fought for state's rights, not slavery, and that the Confederacy had fielded better officers and men and had only lost because of the overwhelming resources of the north. By 1918, when Bragg's name was attached to the base, the generation of Confederate officers who hated him were gone, along with the memory of his military blunders. That pattern held for a series of major bases built throughout the south during the first and second world wars. Fort Benning was also built in 1918 near Columbus, Georgia. At the request of the Columbus Rotary Club, the army named it for Henry Lewis Benning, who was best known as a pro-slavery political firebrand from Columbus who helped draft Georgia's ordinance of secession. Benning was one of the pre-eminent white supremacists of his day, and he openly admitted that his state seceded because of slavery, not states rights. In one speech, he said that his state seceded because of a 'deep conviction on the part of Georgia that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery … If things are allowed to go on as they are … we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it supposed that the white race will stand for that?' Benning served in the Confederate army, but it was his political role as a proponent of a southern slavocracy that first brought him fame and prominence. By the 21st century, there were still 10 army bases that were named for Confederates, and the Pentagon repeatedly resisted efforts to change their names, arguing that tradition outweighed the fact that the bases were named for traitors who had fought to preserve slavery. The Confederate base names were finally changed after the 2020 George Floyd protests; Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty, while Fort Benning became Fort Moore, named for Vietnam War hero Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Moore. (Mel Gibson played Hal Moore and Madeleine Stowe played Julia Moore in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.) But those new names didn't survive Trump's return to office. Hegseth hasn't stopped with army bases. The Pentagon has announced it will strip the name off the US navy ship Harvey Milk, which was named for the gay rights pioneer who was assassinated in 1978, and rename it for Oscar V Peterson, a sailor who won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the second world war. But one thing is certain: Braxton Bragg's civil war contemporaries would be shocked to discover that a man so widely derided as a loser and a martinet during his lifetime is still at the center of a national debate 160 years after the war ended. During the war, one Confederate newspaper editor described him as a man with 'an iron hand and a wooden head'. Grant, the man who so badly beat Bragg during the war, took great pleasure in making fun of Bragg and his ridiculous behavior when he later wrote his memoirs. Grant recounted one infamous episode involving Bragg from the time before the civil war when both men served in the small, pre-war US army. 'On one occasion, when stationed at a post … (Bragg) was commanding one of the companies and at the same time acting as post quartermaster … As commander of the company he made a requisition upon the quartermaster – himself – for something he wanted. As quartermaster he declined to fill the requisition and endorsed on the back of it his reasons for so doing. As company commander he responded to this, urging that his requisition called for nothing but what he was entitled to, and that it was the duty of the quartermaster to fill it. As quartermaster he still persisted that he was right … Bragg referred the whole matter to the commanding officer of the post. The latter exclaimed: 'My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarrelling with yourself!' In his memoirs, Grant wrote that Bragg was 'naturally disputatious'. So maybe Braxton Bragg would fit in perfectly with Donald Trump after all.
