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Donald Trump was reportedly furious at Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s decision to ban the Confederate flag from flying on U.S. military bases, according to anonymous sources claiming to be aware of his reaction.
Sources spoke to CNN And said the president, who has not publicly denounced the use of Confederate flags, said Trump was angry at Esper’s movement.
A White House official said CNN They told me that their story was wrong.
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“His story is inaccurate. When the matter was raised with the president, he was not angry,” the source said.
He was asked if he thought the flag was an offensive symbol during a Fox News In an interview last Sunday, Trump defended its use as a symbol of southern pride.
“It depends on who you are talking to, when you are talking,” Trump said. “When people proudly had their Confederate flags, they don’t talk about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South. They like the South … I say it is freedom from many things, but it is freedom of expression.”
The flag often referred to as “the Confederate flag”, although not the official flag of the Confederacy, was the battle flag of the Northern Virginia Army, the Confederation’s main military force. It is inextricably linked to the United States Civil War.
Former Republican Secretary of Defense Colin Powell said the flag does not represent the United States or Americans and should be left in history.
“They were the Confederate States of America. They were not part of us and this is not the time to continue to show who they were and what they were back then,” Powell said. “This is the time to move on. Let’s continue. We have a flag and only one flag.”
Trump threatened to veto a $ 740 billion national defense authorization bill that included the requirement that all references to the Confederacy or its generals be removed from military bases. Trump’s threat to veto was a direct response to the requirement.
The Trump administration called the requirement “part of a sustained effort to erase from the nation’s history those who fail to meet an ever-changing standard of conduct.”
However, the House passed the legislation with a veto-proof majority and the Senate overwhelmingly passed the legislation Thursday by a count of 86 to 14, which would override Trump’s presidential veto.
Under the new legislation, the bases named for the Confederate generals would be renamed by a commission in the next three years.
Trump said on Twitter Thursday that he spoke with Senator Jim Inhofe, president of the Senate Armed Services, and claimed that the senator said “it is NOT going to change the names of our large military bases.”
In 2015, two days after Trump announced his presidency in the wake of Dylan Roof’s massive racist shooting at a historically black church, Trump said the Confederate flag should resign itself to history.
“I think they should put it in the museum and let it go,” Trump said in response to a question about South Carolina flying the flag in his state capital.
Since then, Trump has become increasingly defensive of Confederate iconography and its advocates.
He said there were “very good people” on both sides of the “Unite Right” march in Charlottesville, where protesters clashed with white nationalists defending a Confederate statue. Heather Heyer, a protester, was killed at the event when one of the attendees of the march hit her with a car.
In the wake of the George Floyd protests, protesters have brought down several statues in honor of the Confederacy, prompting Trump to issue an executive order punishing those who destroy statues, monuments and monuments of the federal government with up to 10 years in prison. .
Since the order was passed, guidance within the Department of Homeland Security has made protecting monuments a priority and treating protesters who threaten them as threats to national security.
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