Hegseth Dragged For Expressing 'Pride' In Confederate History

I for one would love to see our shameful Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth have to sit down with historian and professor of history at Princeton, Kevin Kruse, and be forced to defend this crap, rather than cushy interviews with his former coworkers on Fox not-news.

Hegseth made an appearance on Will Cain’s show this Thursday, and was asked by Cain about the Army wasting $10 million of our taxpayer dollars to restore a Confederate monument to Arlington National Cemetery.

Steve Benen has more on that here: With support for a Confederate monument, Pete Hegseth’s culture war crusade intensifies:

Albert Pike was a Confederate leader who fought to protect slavery, and according to some critics, he even joined the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War. When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the nation’s capital in 2020, a statue honoring Pike was torn down and set on fire.

Five years later, the Trump administration, which has been quite eager in recent months to restore symbols related to Confederate forces that took up arms against the United States, announced that the statue celebrating Pike will be restored and reinstalled.

Here’s the back and forth with Cain and Hegseth from this Thursday:

CAIN: OK, I want to ask you about a couple of different items that are in the news cycle. The Reconciliation Monument, it has been returned to Arlington National Cemetery following its removal in 2023.

This is a Confederate monument. Many suggest it was designed and put in place to symbolize the reconciliation after the Civil War. It was taken away, as I mentioned several years ago.

Why was it important for you to bring that back to Arlington National Cemetery?

HEGSETH: Because we recognize our history, we don’t erase it, Will. We don’t follow the woke lemmings off the cliff that want to tear down statues. We look at and learn from our history, all aspects of it, and so Arlington deserves to have, and we’re grateful to the state of Virginia for partnering with us.

It wasn’t easy. We fought to make it happen and The Reconciliation Monument will return to Arlington, where it belongs to recognize the service of Americans of all chapters.

So we’re not tearing stuff down. We’re done with that. We’re putting statues back. We’re putting paintings back. We’re recognizing our history.

We’re restoring the names of bases as we’ve done across the country because we’re proud of our history, as difficult as it may have been in some chapters. We’re going to teach it, we’re going to live it, and we’re going to fight for it.

“Many suggest.” I’d love to know who Cain is quoting there. Steve Benen explained just how offensive this is in his post describing how others reacted to Hegseth’s similar remarks in his initial announcement:

The Post’s report, however, noted 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.”

Kevin Kruse also savaged Hegseth on social media:

“Hey quick follow up for the History Respecter — what aspect of the Confederacy are you *most* proud of?

The treason against the United States? The defense of slavery? All the losing? I bet it’s the losing.”

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 6:17 PM

I need to ask Jim McPherson if Hegseth ever took his class here but … I doubt it!

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 6:18 PM

“We don’t erase history” says the sentient can of body spray who took Medgar Evers and Harvey Milk’s names off Navy ships

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) August 7, 2025 at 6:20 PM