Trump denies Confederate flag is racist and threatens to veto bid to rename military bases

‘They love their flag, it represents the South,’ US president says of people who fly the Civil War banner

Donald Trump has claimed that people who display Confederate flags are “not talking about racism” and threatened to veto any legislation that includes measures to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders.

“When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism,” the US president told Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday in a preview of an interview to be aired on Sunday.

“They love their flag, it represents the South.”

The president also threatened to veto Congress’ National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA) if it contains a provision to purge US military bases of all Confederate paraphernalia and honours, including their names.

That provision has been included in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, which the federal government must pass every year to fund its defence budget.

Asked whether he would veto current versions in the House and Senate of the defence spending bill, the president replied, “I might. Yeah, I might.”

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has urged the president not to take such a step, touting the Senate’s version of the NDAA as the strong product of an increasingly rare bipartisan moment of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee and other relevant panels.

“Well, I would hope the president really wouldn’t veto the bill over this issue. ... I hope the president will reconsider vetoing the entire defence bill, which includes pay raises for our troops, over a provision in there that could lead to changing the names,” Mr McConnell said in an interview on Fox News earlier this month.

The president has teased a veto of the bill, worth an estimated $740bn (£589bn), for weeks after senator Elizabeth Warren led an effort in the Armed Services Committee to add language to “remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honour or commemorate the Confederate States of America ... or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America from all assets of the Department of Defence” within three years of the 2020 NDAA’s enactment.

While most Republican senators are likely to pass the bill with such language included, several, led by senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, have proposed to amend the NDAA to preserve — for now, at least — the names of US military bases commemorating Confederate officers.

“The American people are tired of the cancel culture. They’re tired of the woke mob. And they want to hold onto who we are together and to find common ground,” the freshman Missouri Republican said recently in an interview with Fox News.

The Pentagon has already circumvented Mr Trump on the Confederate flag issue by announcing a new policy on Friday that would effectively ban anyone from flying it at a military base.

The new policy lists the types of flags the US Defence Department will allow troops to fly on its bases across the world. The Confederate flag is not on the list of acceptable flags.

Mr Trump’s comments about the Confederate flag are consistent with his stated positions on race relations in the US, a topic he has increasingly sought to address in his tweets and at campaign events.

Mr Trump is certain that being the spokesman of a white grievance movement is the key to his re-election this November, The Washington Post reported earlier this month.

The president has demanded that Nascar driver Bubba Wallace apologise for his comments and actions as the FBI investigated whether someone hung a noose at his team’s garage at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama earlier this summer. The White House has not clarified to reporters what exactly Mr Wallace ought to apologise for.

Even before his campaign rhetoric began to heat up again this cycle, the president was no stranger to such cultural touchpoints.

He rose to political fame partly on the back of his racist “birther” conspiracy, a debunked theory claiming the former president Barack Obama was not a natural-born US citizen. Mr Trump never produced any evidence to support his accusation against Mr Obama’s citizenship, despite repeated claims he had corroborating information.