President Trump was overheard on a phone call to Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe asking for assurance that Fort Lee, a U.S. military base that bears the name of the commander of the Confederate Army, Robert E. Lee, would not be renamed.
“We’re gonna keep the name of Robert E. Lee?” Trump asked Inhofe, a Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to the New York Times.
Inhofe was at Trattoria Alberto, an Italian restaurant on Capitol Hill, when he took the call on Wednesday. He replied, “Just trust me. I’ll make it happen.”
Inhofe put the president on speakerphone, which allowed a nearby diner to record the call.
Trump was heard bragging that he received “about 95,000 positive retweets” on a Twitter post that he shared recently. A tweet last week asserted that Inhofe did not believe in “Cancel Culture” and had told him he would not change the names of “military forts and bases.”
The Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act last week, which includes a provision to rename bases.
Trump has railed against calls for changing base names and threatened to veto the legislation on this basis. The secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, said last month that he was open to the idea of changing the names, including for Fort Lee.
In the call on Wednesday, Trump could be heard dismissing calls for change across the country. He also discussed a potential appointee “resigning,” believed to be about Anthony Tata, whose hearing for a top Pentagon job was delayed by Inhofe today. CNN reports that Tata’s nomination for undersecretary of defense policy has since been withdrawn by the White House.
