During a recent appearance on Fox News, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted that, in addition to his usual work, he’s also investing time and attention into things like “statues” and “paintings.”
The beleaguered Pentagon chief didn’t elaborate on which works of art were of interest, but the answer has apparently come into focus. The New York Times reported:
The Pentagon is restoring a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee, which includes a slave guiding the Confederate general’s horse in the background, to the West Point library three years after a congressionally mandated commission ordered it removed, officials said. The 20-foot-tall painting, which hung at the United States Military Academy for 70 years, was taken down in response to a 2020 law that stripped the names of Confederate leaders from military bases.
How, exactly, does the DOD intend to reinstall the portrait without running afoul of the law? I haven’t the foggiest idea, and the Pentagon hasn’t yet explained, although it’s hard not to wonder whether officials are prepared simply to ignore the law and see what happens.
There are a few other elements to this worth keeping in mind as the story unfolds.
Right off the bat, I’ve never seen a presidential administration in which news about wall décor has been quite so frequent. I’ve kept a running file on this for months, and it’s practically overflowing — which is every bit as weird as it seems.
What’s more, for all of Hegseth’s chest-thumping about emphasizing “lethality,” his Defense Department sure does find time for other unrelated pursuits.
During a recent “expletive-laden address” at the Army War College, the secretary boasted, “We are laser-focused on our mission of warfighting.” The former Fox News host did not, however, note that he was apparently referring to a domestic culture war: Hegseth has invested a considerable amount of time and energy in library books. And scrubbing Defense Department websites of articles and images about Jackie Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers. And renaming Navy ships. And leading a Christian prayer service in the Pentagon’s auditorium. And amplifying videos about denying women the right to vote.
Finally, let’s not overlook the Confederate-related pattern, too. The Pentagon is apparently eager to reinstall a painting of a Confederate general who was responsible for taking up arms against the United States and killing Americans. It comes after Hegseth also renamed military bases by restoring Confederate names.
Perhaps most notably, it was earlier this month when Hegseth announced the reinstallation of a racist Confederate memorial that had been removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023.
The Washington Post reported soon after that critics have made the case that the memorial “glorified the Southern cause and glossed over slavery, with elements such as a frieze showing an enslaved Black man following his owner and an enslaved woman — described on the cemetery’s website as a ‘mammy’ — holding the baby of a Confederate officer.” What’s more, the Confederate memorial’s original removal in 2021 was endorsed by a commission led in part by Ty Seidule, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general. Asked about Hegseth’s latest move, Seidule told the Post, “The idea of putting that monument back up is just wrong. This is not some woke thing, it’s the will of the American people that Secretary Hegseth is going against.” The monument, Seidule added, “is the cruelest I’ve ever seen because it’s a pro-slavery, pro-segregation, anti-United States monument. It’s not a reconciliation monument. It’s a Confederate monument and it’s meant to say that the white South was right and the United States of America was wrong.” Given the broader pattern, it’s far from clear whether or not Hegseth and his team would be bothered by such a message.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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