#Trump mulls veto of defense bill if military bases strip Confederate names

President Trump threatened to veto a defense spending bill if it includes a provision to remove the names of Confederate leaders from US military bases.

“I might. Yeah, I might,” he told Chris Wallace during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

But Wallace pressed him, saying the military is behind stripping the names.

“I don’t care what the military says. I’m supposed to make the decision,” he said. “Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two world wars — nobody even knows General Bragg. We won two world wars.”

“What are we going to rename it? You going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton? What are you going to name it, Chris?” he asked. “No, I’m not going to go changing them,” Trump added.

The National Defense Authorization Act sets aside $1 million to change the names of 10 bases named after Confederate soldiers.

It also includes a pay hike for members of the military that Trump said they would still get.

The president also defended the Confederate flag, which has come under renewed attack amid the protests over the killing of George Floyd at the end of May.

“When people proudly had their Confederate flags they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South. They like the South,” he told Wallace. “I say it’s freedom of many things, but it’s freedom of speech.”

NASCAR recently said it would ban the Confederate flag at its events and Mississippi voted to remove the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag.

He also weighed in on the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I’m not offended either by Black Lives Matter, that’s freedom of speech. You know the whole thing with cancel culture — we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the North and the South fought.”