President Donald Trump held a rally at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg on Tuesday, criticizing his predecessor Joe Biden for having changed the fort’s name but not seeming to realize that while it is again Fort Bragg, it is no longer named after the treasonous Confederate general Braxton Bragg.
“Can you believe they changed that name in the last administration for a little bit?” he asked the assembled Army troops. “We restored the historic name of this very, very special place.”
In fact, though, Trump and his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, did no such thing. Instead, the fort is now named after Roland Bragg, a World War II hero at the Battle of the Bulge.
The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act required that military facilities honoring Confederate officers be renamed. Trump vetoed it for that reason, but Congress overrode his veto and passed it into law.
Those who fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War are, by definition, traitors, having taken up arms against the United States.
Under Biden, a commission came up with new names for Fort Bragg and eight other major installations after soliciting input from local communities. Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty in 2023.
But Trump, who had repeatedly praised the Confederacy during his first term, promised to revert Fort Liberty’s name to Fort Bragg, and do the same for the other bases, during his campaign to regain his office.
“He knows his audience,” said Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican consultant in Florida who left the party after Trump took over. “Hell, I get it. I am a 76-year-old white Southerner.”
But neither Trump nor Hegseth could unilaterally undo the law that had banned Confederate names for military bases, so Hegseth approved a plan to “rename” Fort Bragg after a different Army officer with the same last name.
Another major base, Fort Moore in Georgia, saw its name revert to Fort Benning, although not after its original namesake, either.
The Army facility was named after Henry Benning, another Confederate general who supported slavery. After the passage of the provision in 2020, it was named Fort Moore, after Vietnam War hero Gregory Moore and his wife, Julia Moore, who helped create teams to notify families in person of their killed or wounded loved ones.
Under Trump and Hegseth, the fort was renamed Fort Benning — only this time after Fred Benning, who received the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I.
White House aides did not respond to HuffPost queries about whether Trump understood that the names are not honoring Confederate officers anymore.
“Remember, it was only that little brief moment that it wasn’t called Fort Bragg. It was by the Biden administration, not Trump,” he said. “We got it changed.”
Stipanovich, who said he considers himself fairly well informed, said he had assumed that Fort Bragg had been renamed after Braxton Bragg. “I don’t know who the Bragg is that it’s named after now,” he said. “I doubt anybody sat down and briefed Trump.”
In his speech on Tuesday, Trump said he would also restore the names of seven other bases originally named after Confederate officers.
“For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort AP Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee,” he promised.
Unless the 2020 law is changed, though, Hegseth would have to find veterans with the same last names as those seven other Confederate traitors as well, although it is unclear whether any officers have been named “Robert E. Lee” in the Army’s history other than the commanding officer of the Confederate forces.