The Great Pretenders Restore “The Warrior Ethos” And “Re-Establish The Warrior Culture”
We’ve found (Truthfully: Just remembered.) the new theme song for the presidential administration: Release by The Platters in 1955, The Great Pretender.
Oh-oh, yes, I'm the great pretender,
Pretending that I'm doing well.
My need is such, I pretend too much.
I'm lonely, but no one can tell.
Oh-oh, yes, I'm the great pretender,
Adrift in a world of my own
The problem with this president’s pretending is that it’s a poorly disguised appeal to haters and it will cost millions of unrecognized and never-admitted federal dollars.
Consider: On June 10, the Los Angeles curfew area covered one-square-mile. One-square-mile of the City’s five-hundred-square miles. One-square-mile of Los Angeles County’s 4,084 square miles.
Consider: The one-square-mile covered by the Los Angeles City’s curfew compared to the 800 acres – 1.2-square-miles - of the president’s eponymous golf course and resort in Doral, Florida, where a summertime round of golf costs from $195 (Twilight rate on the cheap Silver Fox course) to $595 (Daytime on the “famous” Blue Monster).
With a reported 10 million registered viewers, Military.com offered a number of insights into the administration’s most recent great pretendings.
On June 10 – prior to his $35,000,000 to $45,000,000+ “See me” June 14 250th Birthday parade honoring himself and the United States Army, the president addressed chosen troops at Fort Bragg, NC. Military.com described the president’s speech as
“laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium - blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.”
In the end, however, it was a great pretend. The following day Military.com reported:
“Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance.
“One unit-level message bluntly saying: ‘No fat soldiers.’
"’If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,’ another note to troops said.
“Service officials declined to comment when asked about the extent to which troops were screened, whether soldiers displaying partisan cheers on television -- a violation of long-standing Pentagon rules - would be disciplined or if soldiers who objected to participating in the event, citing disagreements with the administration, would be disciplined or admonished in any way.”
The president used his great pretention to announce “a little breaking news” – his administration was removing the name Fort Gregg-Adams, bestowed on the base by the Biden administration on April 27, 2023, and returning it to Fort (Robert E.) Lee – honoring the West Point graduate, slave owner (His son estimated Lee inherited three or four families from his mother.), traitor to the United States and the Constitution, and (losing) leader of the Army of Northern Virginia, who surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.
“For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee,” the president announced to the gathered troops.
Yup!
Presidential pretending seems to include the Pentagon, which reported the new name of the fort honors Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo Soldier awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery during the Spanish-American War. Created by Congress in 1866, the Buffalo Soldiers were four all-Black Cavalry regiments and earned their name from Native American tribes who fought against them during the American Indian Wars (American Frontier Wars, 1609 – 1890).
Problem With the Pentagon’s Announcement of Honoring Fitz Lee: Trump told American soldiers the renaming would be “Fort Robert E. Lee.”
In 2021, Congress passed legislation forbidding the naming of military bases after anyone who held leadership positions in the breakaway Confederacy during the Civil War. As a result, the Biden Administration renamed seven bases in 2023,
In a truly Trump-esque attempt at obfuscation, at the direction of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Army found service members with the same surnames as the Confederates who had been previously honored. Fort Bragg, where the president made his announcement, was renamed Fort Liberty by President Biden
The latest renaming strips honors to leaders such as President (and General) Dwight D. Eisenhower and Black soldiers. No women are included in the newest Army list and neither the Pentagon nor the White House has provided cost estimates for changing all the signs at the bases – just two years after they were renamed – or on the nation’s highways and interstates to provide directions. Forget about stationery and coffee cups.
Fort Robert E. Lee-Gregg/Adams-Pvt. “Fitz” Lee was briefly named for Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, a Black logistics leader and Lt. Col. Charity Adams, who led the first female Black Army unit deployed in World War II. Lee received the Medal of Honor for his heroism moving under fire to rescue wounded comrades. Today, the same Army and nation he served – and a presidential administration – have decided a former slave owner, traitor and loser is more deserving. Today, the anatomy-kissing Secretary of Defense seems terrified of honoring a Black woman because pseudo-macho racists might be offended.
[EDITORS’ NOTE: Wow! They must be terrified of Roman Catholicism’s Black Madonnas or the brown-skinned Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas.]
Too strong?
Consider:
On June 3, Associated Press and Military Times writer Lolita C. Baldor reported, “Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so unusual, suggesting that changing a name is bad luck and tempts retribution from the sea gods.”
That doesn’t seem to bother Secretary Hegseth, who has “ordered the Navy to rename the replenishment oiler Harvey Milk, a highly rare move that will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War.”
Apparently, “The change was laid out in an internal memo that officials said defended the action as a move to align with President Donald Trump and Hegseth’s objectives to ‘re-establish the warrior culture.’”
In a public statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell explained Hegseth is “committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.”
In 2016, then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said that the John Lewis-class of oilers, including the new USNS Harvey Milk, would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights. During a 2021 christening ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he wanted the event to be “not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future.”
One of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office, while serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Milk sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing and employment based on sexual orientation. Milk served four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. On June 3, Military.com reported:
“A defense official confirmed that the Navy was making preparations to strip the ship of its name but noted that Navy Secretary John Phelan was ordered to do so by Hegseth. The official also said that the timing of the announcement - occurring during Pride month - was intentional.”
Despite his crusader cross and other tattoos, Hegseth is Cowardly and Petty!
Writing at Military.com Joanna Guildin named “seven other naval ships who honor civic leaders and activists that would also be renamed.” They include:
Lucy Stone
USNS Lucy Stone, T-AO 209. A gifted orator, Lucy Stone used her talents to argue for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery; she organized the first National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850, calling for “equality before the law without distinction of sex or color.” She also organized the Women’s National Loyal League, promoting emancipation and voting rights for all Black Americans.
Dolores Huerta
USNS Dolores Huerta, T-AO 214. In 1950, bilingual teacher Dolores Huerta left teaching to organize for worker rights, saying “I quit because I couldn't stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children." Along with Caesar Chavez, she co-founded what would eventually become the United Farm Workers.
Thurgood Marshall
USNS Thurgood Marshall, T-AO 211. As the lead counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Thurgood Marshall won 29 of 32 cases before the Supreme Court; he won Brown v, Board of Education in 1954, striking down the “separate but equal” doctrine and clearing the way for the integration of public schools. Nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, he became the first Black associate justice of the Supreme Court.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, T-AO 212. Popularly known in later years as “The Fabulous RBG,” she interrupted her Harvard Law School studies to accompany her husband during a two-year military assignment. Appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993, she was the second woman and the first Jewish woman to serve on the nation’s highest bench. As an attorney she was instrumental in ending the military’s “forced abortion” policy and, as a justice, she authored the majority opinion which found Virginia Military Academy’s males-only policy was unconstitutional.
Harriett Tubman
USNS Harriet Tubman, T-AO 213. In the 1820s Harriet Tubman freed herself by trekking from Maryland to Philadelphia; she then made thirteen roundtrips on foot – helping to free at least 70 enslaved people and by sharing information saved another 70 who were seeking freedom independently. At one point, the bounty for her capture was more than $1.5 million in today’s currency. During the Civil War, she served as a spy, scout and nurse. In 1863, after successfully gathering information behind enemy lines, Tubman was the first U.S. woman to lead a major military operation - the Combahee Ferry Raid; she and 150 Black soldiers freed more than 700 enslaved people, destroyed property and goods and delivered a blow to morale across the Confederacy. She didn't lose a single soldier in the raid. Denied a military pension, she was ultimately awarded a pension as a nurse and was buried with military honors.
Cesar Chavez
USNS CESAR CHAVEZ, T-AKE 14. For a time when he was a child, Cesar Chavez and his family lived in a car or makeshift tent while they followed Western growing seasons as migrant workers. Committed to non-violence, the Navy veteran was a co-founder of the United Farm Workers. Efforts are underway to propose Chavez for canonization as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.
Medgar Evers
USNS Medgar Evers, T-AKE 13. A high school dropout who joined the Army during World War II and shipped out to Western Europe in a segregated unit, Medgar Evers returned home having experienced a Jim Crow-less Europe and determined to fight racial injustice in the U.S. He spent the rest of his life as a civil rights activist, beginning as the first NAACP field officer in Mississippi. His home was firebombed in 1963, the same year he was assassinated in his carport by a white supremacist. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with military honors. In March 2025, under anti-DEI orders from the Trump Administration, his story was deleted from the cemetery’s website.
Apparently, Donald Trump and Secretary Hegseth are so terrified of dead Black, brown or LGBTQ American heroes that they’re removing their names from military camps and Navy ships, preferring to honor slave owners, traitors and folks who fought against the United States of America.
On October 15, 2016, People reported Donald Trump’s 1997 claim that he was a “’brave soldier’ for avoiding sexually transmitted diseases during his single years in the late ‘90s.
"’It's amazing, I can't even believe it. I've been so lucky in terms of that whole world, it is a dangerous world out there. It's like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave solider,’ Trump said in the interview when Howard Stern asked how he handled making sure he wasn't contracting STDs from the women he was sleeping with.
“The business-mogul-turned-politician elaborated on the fact in the interview, calling women's vaginas ‘potential landmines’ and saying ‘there's some real danger there.’
“Also appearing on Stern's show in 1993, Trump bragged about his promiscuous lifestyle while single and stated that men who didn't go to Vietnam didn't need to feel guilty because dating during the AIDS epidemic in the '80s was also dangerous.
"’You know, if you're young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam — it's called the dating game,’ Trump said to Stern in a 1993 interview. ‘Dating is like being in Vietnam. You're the equivalent of a soldier going over to Vietnam.’"
While serving in the United States Army Medical Corps in Cuba, surgeon Walter Reed performed ground-breaking research into the transmission of yellow and typhoid fevers, eventually saving tens of thousands of lives. The nation’s premier military medical facility (where Trump was treated for COVID0) is named after the researcher and physician.
In a January 25, 2025 press release the Department of Defense announced Hegseth’s determination to “revive the warrior ethos.”
Do not be surprised when – to “revive the warrior ethos” – Trump and Hegseth announce they are renaming Walter Reed Hospital for Dr. Larry Braunstein, the podiatrist who diagnosed Trump’s “bone spurs,” making it possible for him to avoid military service in Vietnam and battle STDs.