Pete Hegseth Somehow Outwits Congress

What’s in a name?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, sworn into office just a few weeks ago, has already won a major battle in MAGA’s ongoing war against woke. Hegseth announced on Monday that he’d returned the North Carolina Army Base Fort Liberty back to its original name Fort Bragg.

It’s a little on the nose that Trump’s new defense secretary would so quickly write off “liberty.” Hegseth shared a video of himself signing the order while dressed in jeans, a Herb Tarlek sports coat, and a fashionably distressed U.S. flag cap. It’s now apparently Casual Friday 24/7 at the restricted country club. (Watch below.)

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Humble Bragg

Fort Bragg was originally named after North Carolina-native Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general in the Civil War (i.e. a “traitor”). He’d already resigned from the U.S. Army in 1856 to run a sugar plantation in Louisiana, where he personally profited from the labor of 105 enslaved people. He’d originally considered secession unconstitutional, but he obviously changed his mind. Hypocrisy is a relatively minor character flaw compared to owning people.

In 2022, when Hegseth was still hosting Fox & Friends Weekend, Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty, as part of a larger effort to stop honoring dead traitors. Republicans predictably opposed this sensible action. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, shortly after he launched his doomed presidential campaign, told a North Carolina audience in 2023, “I also look forward to, as president, restoring the name of Fort Bragg to our great military base in Fayetteville, North Carolina ... It’s an iconic name and iconic base, and we’re not gonna let political correctness run amok.”

Mike Pence — almost murdered by white supremacists attempting to overthrow the government — nonetheless embraced the previous big insurrection. He vowed, “We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon, and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg.”

Hegseth ultimately delivered on this paltry promise, but with an unexpected twist. The newly rechristened Fort Bragg is no longer named after Braxton Bragg but Roland Leon Bragg, an Army paratrooper during World War II. Unlike Braxton, Roland fought against white supremacists.

Roland Bragg saved a wounded soldier’s life when he drove a stolen German vehicle to an Allied hospital in Belgium. His daughter Debra Sokoll said, “The Americans were shooting at him because he had a German Jeep, and the Germans were shooting at him because he stole their jeep, and he still made it to the other side.”

He never knew he succeeded until 1993, when he received a letter of thanks from John Martz. The two men later reunited at Martz’s California home.

Roland Bragg died in 1999 at 75. According to Sokoll, Bragg, who lived with post-traumatic stress from the war, was a devoted father who “always took time for his kids.”

This Bragg is an American whose heroism is worth commemorating.

Braxton Bragg’s service isn’t worthy of boasting

Braxton Bragg fought to preserve slavery and white supremacy, and he wasn’t even that good at it. He was elevated to command the Army of Mississippi (later known as the Army of Tennessee) in June 1862. He and Brigadier General Edmund Kirby Smith tried to capture Kentucky but Bragg retreated after the Battle of Perryville in October. A couple months later, he retreated again in Murfreesboro, Tennessee after facing the Army of the Cumberland under Major General William Rosecrans (a noble family).

The next year, Rosecrans led what is regarded as one of the most brilliant maneuvers in the war and drove Confederate troops out of Middle Tennessee. Bragg surrendered and retreated. He did defeat Rosecrans at the Battle of Chickamauga but was criticized for not mounting an effective pursuit. Major General Ulysses S. Grant later whooped Bragg's army and pushed them back to Georgia. Confederate White Supremacist President Jefferson Davis finally relieved Bragg of command.

However, this might’ve been too late for the Confederacy’s evil cause. Historians believe that Bragg’s bungling ego-driven stupidity contributed greatly to the Confederacy’s ultimate defeat. The officers and soldiers under his command resented Bragg and criticized his lousy battlefield performance. Author Peter Cozzens wrote in his book, No Better Place to Die: The Battle of Stones River:

Even Bragg’s staunchest supporters admonished him for his quick temper, general irritability, and tendency to wound innocent men with barbs thrown during his frequent fits of anger. His reluctance to praise or flatter was exceeded, we are told, only by the tenacity with which, once formed, he clung to an adverse impression of a subordinate. For such officers—and they were many in the Army of Mississippi—Bragg's removal or their transfer were the only alternatives to an unbearable existence.

Braxton Bragg doesn’t deserve to have his name on a local sandwich — even the fried bologna — let alone a U.S. military installation.

In a 2002 Atlantic essay, General David Petraeus explained how the government started naming military bases after white supremacists and known traitors. It was a form of racist diplomacy.

Fort Bragg and most of the other posts in question were established either during World War I, at one peak of the Lost Cause movement, or in the early 1940s, as the country was feverishly gearing up for World War II. Army leaders, to say nothing of political figures at the time, undoubtedly wanted to ingratiate themselves with the southern states in which the forts were located. They bowed to—and in many cases shared—the Lost Cause nostalgia that also sponsored so much civilian statuary, street naming, and memorial building from the end of Reconstruction through the 1930s, when the trend tapered off but did not end completely. In many cases, the Army’s sentiments simply mirrored those of the society it served.

Republicans complained that changing the names of military bases was an affront to history. Hegseth argues that the original names are a “legacy” to the troops who were stationed there. Now, all their coffee mugs and T-shirts have the wrong name

“There are other bases that have been renamed that erodes that very same legacy,” he said. “There’s a reason I said Bragg and Benning when I walked into the Pentagon on day one. But it’s not just Bragg and Benning. There are a lot of other service members that have connections. And we’re going to do our best to restore it.”

Congress passed a bill in 2020 that prohibited the Department of Defense from naming any installations after Confederate leaders. There was even enough Republican support to override Trump’s veto. It’s not a surprise that the current Trump administration has defied Congress, although Hegseth clearly exploited a legal loophole.

“By instead invoking the name of World War II soldier Private Roland Bragg, Secretary Hegseth has not violated the letter of the law, but he has violated its spirit,” Democratic Sen. Jack Reed said.

The law is not spectral. It has no spirit. This is like when Conan O’Brien signed a contract to host The Tonight Show but didn’t have it put in writing that The Tonight Show starts at 11:30 p.m. His lawyers must have consulted on the wording of this bill.

The government naming commission — formally known as (deep breath) the “Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America” — should’ve renamed Fort Bragg after an actual person. “Liberty” is a great concept but it doesn’t have a family.

Reed goes on to say that Hegseth “has insulted the Gold Star families who proudly supported Fort Liberty’s name, and he has dishonored himself by associating Private Bragg’s good name with a Confederate traitor.”

Reed is reaching like Mr. Fantastic when he suggests that Roland Bragg’s family will feel insulted that he’s the new namesake for Fort Bragg.

However, Hegseth might experience more pushback if he changes Fort Moore back to Fort Benning. Fort Moore was actually named after retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and his wife Julia. If he still goes through with the change, I’d suggest the great American actor Annette Bening. It’s possible the Conan O’Brien bill writers weren’t specific about the spelling, either.