On Monday, as President Donald Trump’s inauguration coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, some of the president’s most extreme supporters chose to celebrate Confederate general and slaveowner Robert E. Lee instead.
Alabama and Mississippi have recognized Robert E. Lee Day as a state holiday since the early 1900s, later combining it with the federal celebration of King, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1983.
But far-right posters celebrated Lee like a national hero Monday, just as they welcomed Trump back to the Oval Office.
“Trump’s America is ushered in on Robert E. Lee Day,” one racist account wrote on X, alongside a photo of the Confederate battle flag. “Today is the day of the Saxon.”
“What should Trump change MLK day to?” another user asked, garnering over 50,000 views.
“Robert E. Lee Day has a nice ring to it,” an anonymous, self-proclaimed ‘Trump goon’ replied.
Lee commanded the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, fighting to maintain slavery in the South until his surrender to the Union in 1865. The general’s personal opinions on race have been contested and distorted since his death, but historian Eric Foner notes that Lee owned slaves and thought abolitionists were pursuing an “evil course.”
In recent years, federal and state authorities have removed statues commemorating Lee from the U.S. Capitol and parks in New Orleans and Richmond, Va., the former capital of the Confederacy.
The planned removal of another statue in Charlottesville, Va., spurred the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, when white supremacists marched through the city, killing one counterprotestor and injuring dozens more. Charlottesville removed the statue in 2021.
For his part, Trump praised Lee’s military “genius” in an interview last October on The Joe Rogan Experience, and called Lee “a great general” at a 2018 rally in Ohio.
After the NAACP commemorated King in a post on X this morning, some of the president’s supporters were quick to elevate their preferred heroes above the civil rights leader.
“It belongs to Trump and Robert E Lee,” one conservative from Florida wrote, adding an AI-generated image of the two figures shaking hands.
“From this day forward, today will forever be known as DJT Day,” another hard-right poster said. “Cry harder.”
Ironically, several pro-Trump accounts on X shared a photograph of Trump, his son Barron, and Vice President J.D. Vance standing in front of the Ulysses S. Grant statue at the Capitol this morning. Grant famously defeated Lee as a Union general before becoming America’s 18th president.
Instead of celebrating Trump’s ascent to the presidency, some Confederate sympathizers noticed Grant’s looming presence in the photo and wished it was Lee instead.
“Grant,” one user wrote with an expressionless emoji. “It’s time to return Edward Valentine’s statue of Robert E. Lee to the Capitol.”
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