Snowball-loving Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) promised President Donald Trump that he would kill any bill that would change the names of military bases currently named after Confederate generals.
According to the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman, Trump called Inhofe while he was sitting in a Washington Italian restaurant Wednesday evening. Trump was so loud that the entire conversation was recorded by someone nearby.
“The conversation, overheard and recorded by someone in the room, ranged from a discussion about Anthony Tata, the retired Army brigadier general whose nomination for a top Pentagon policy position has become complicated, to Mr. Trump’s desire to preserve the name of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, on a military base,” said the report.
“We’re gonna keep the name of Robert E. Lee?” Trump asked Inhofe.
“Just trust me, I’ll make it happen,” Inhofe said.
“I had about 95,000 positive retweets on that. That’s a lot,” said Trump, citing a Tweet he posted last Friday. Inhofe promised he wouldn’t change the names of “military forts and bases” and that the senator “is not a believer in ‘Cancel Culture.’”
The Senate already passed a defense reauthorization that had in the bill that the base names would be changed. The vote was 86-14, which Trump has threatened to veto. But with such a margin, Trump’s veto could be overridden.
Trump then went off about “cancel culture” and told Inhofe that people “want to be able to go back to life.” Trump dismissed the shift taking place as Americans grow increasingly opposed to overt expressions of racism.
They also discussed the potential of someone “resigning” and how to put them in another appointment, which then evolved into a conversation about Gen. Tata, whose nomination to a Pentagon post was stalled after attacks he made on Twitter about Muslims and calling former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.”
Read the full report from The New York Times.