The Senate overwhelmingly approved a defense bill on Thursday that included Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) provision requiring the military to rename U.S. bases named after Confederate generals.
The bill passed by a vote of 86-14, a veto-proof majority that would override President Donald Trump’s effort to kill the measure, which he had threatened to do at the end of June after Warren announced her proposal.
“I will Veto the Defense Authorization Bill if the Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren (of all people!) Amendment, which will lead to the renaming (plus other bad things!) of Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, and many other Military Bases from which we won Two World Wars, is in the Bill!” he tweeted at the time.
Warren slammed Trump’s hostile response on the Senate floor shortly afterward, declaring that the President had “chosen a well-worn path of hatred and division.”
“The Confederate soldiers who betrayed the United States to fight for the Confederacy were fighting for the institution of slavery. Plain. Simple. Ugly,” the Democratic senator said. “It is time to put the names of those leaders who fought and killed U.S. soldiers in defense of a perverted version of America where they belong, as footnotes in our history books, not plastered on our nation’s most significant military installations.”
There are currently ten Army bases named after Confederate generals.
ACTUAL_TRUMP_QUOTES on July 24th, 2020 at 02:25 UTC »
"Excuse me. Excuse me. I don't care what the military says. I do... I'm supposed to make the decision. Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two World Wars. Nobody even knows General Bragg. We won two World Wars. Go to that community where Fort Bragg is, in a great state. I love that state. Go to the community. Say, 'How do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg?' And then, what are we gonna name it? You're gonna name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton? What are you gonna name it, Chris? Tell me what you're gonna name it? So, there's a whole thing here. We won two World Wars. Two World Wars. Beautiful World Wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg. We won out it of all of these forts that now they want to throw those names away, and no, I'm against that, and you know what, most other people are, and I even. I don't believe in polls because I see the fakest polls I've ever seen, but, that poll is a 64 percent thing, which actually surprised me. We won World Wars out of these, out of these military bases. No, I'm not gonna go changing them. I'm not gonna go changing them. I'm not gonna go changing them."
CaptainApathy419 on July 24th, 2020 at 00:25 UTC »
I think Trump unintentionally made a good - albeit cringeworthy - point when he said we won "two beautiful World Wars" with the bases in question. There are an awful lot of WWI and WWII soldiers who could do with more recognition. How about Ft. Davis, after Benjamin O. Davis, the first African-American general? Or Ft. Rose, after Maurice Rose, the only general to die in action in WWII?
EDIT: Apparently there were other generals who were KIA in WWII. Wikipedia says that Rose was the only one killed in the European Theater.
jon_the_mako on July 23rd, 2020 at 23:43 UTC »
Veto proof! That's awesome.