Trump vows to restore Confederate general's name to NC military base

Former President Trump on Friday vowed to revert North Carolina’s Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg if he's elected this fall, a little over a year after the military installation was redesignated to remove the name of a Confederate general.

“The first question that I asked: Should we change the name from Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg?” Trump said, prompting raucous applause from the crowd gathered for his town hall in Fayetteville, near the base. “So here’s what we do, we get elected. I’m doing it.”  

The Army base, the largest in the country, was originally named after Gen. Braxton Bragg, a slave owner and Confederate general. During his administration, Trump mocked efforts to rename the base as part of a push to ditch the names of Confederate soldiers. It was officially dubbed "Fort Liberty" last year.

“I'm going to promise to you, as I said at the beginning, that we're going to change the name back to Fort Bragg,” Trump underscored toward the end of the roughly hour-long event. 

The former president fielded questions from pre-selected audience members, including current and former members of the military, with Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R) moderating. The night focused on the military and foreign policy, and Trump took the opportunity to re-up his ideas for an Iron Dome in the U.S. and to slam Biden for saying Israel shouldn’t target Iranian nuclear sites.

“We have to be absolutely prepared. But when they asked him that question, the answer should have been, ‘hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later,’” Trump said. 

Trump’s stop in the southeastern part of North Carolina comes as western parts of the states recover from the devastation wrought in recent days by Hurricane Helene. 

The Republican presidential nominee bashed the Biden administration for what he labeled a “rotten job” responding to the crisis and called out his rival, Vice President Harris, in the latest example of his efforts to use the crisis as a line of political attack. 

“Kamala should be here. She shouldn't be anywhere else,” Trump said.

Harris visited affected communities in Georgia this week and is set to travel to North Carolina on Saturday, a day after Trump’s town hall, to tour the damage and get an update on recovery efforts. 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has deployed nearly 5,000 federal officials to support response efforts and directed the deployment of up to 1,000 troops to help North Carolina’s recovery.

The Tar Heel State is one of this cycle's critical battlegrounds as Trump and Harris battle for the Oval Office, and Helene's fallout threatens to roil the race in the Southeast.

The latest polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill show Trump is up by just a fraction of a percentage point in North Carolina.