Donald Trump has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act if an amendment put forward by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to change the names of military bases honoring Confederate leaders is included in the final version.
Invoking his “Pocahontas” nickname for Warren, over her self-proclaimed Native American heritage, Trump wrote that he would veto the bill if the “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren (of all people!) Amendment” went through.
The bill, he said, “will lead to the renaming (plus other bad things!) of Fort Bragg, Robert E. Lee, and many other Military Bases from which we won Two World Wars,” the president said.
In the amendment, Warren has called for the names of Confederate leaders to be stripped from 10 military bases, as well as from other military assets, including aircraft and ships.
peaking from the Senate floor on Monday, Warren said it was time to consign figures like Robert E. Lee, an American Confederate general who served as commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, to the “footnotes in our history books.”
The push to see Confederate names removed from military assets, she said, comes following a time of “deep reflection” on systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
With cities across the country seeing Confederate statues pulled down in the wake of Floyd’s death, she said it is time to rename sites honoring the same controversial figures.
