It was pride month in June so of course the Media Research Center — known for its wild meltdowns during that month — cheered that, just like WorldNetDaily, a Navy ship named after a gay man was renamed at the start of it. Jorge Bonilla cranked out faux outrage over criticism of the renaming in a June 3 post:
Fresh from being bothered about President Trump mentioning the need for deportations in light of the horrific Boulder firebombing being carried out by an illegal alien, it appears that CBS Evening News has found a new outrage du jour: the renaming of certain naval vessels. Namely, the USNS Harvey Milk- and during Pride Month!
[…]The whole Milk fiasco encapsulates what underlies Secretary Hegseth’s mission at DoD: restoring readiness to a United States Navy decimated by woke nonsense. Ships run aground, aircraft carriers colliding at sea and amphibious vessels burning in port with no one seemingly able to extinguish the fire because the Navy elevated shipboard drag shows at the expense of operational readiness.
The report would’ve been more interesting had it gone this route. Instead, CBS used the Navy as a narrative device with which to foist Pride Month propaganda on its unsuspecting viewing public. The renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk is considered to be a blasphemous act, a desecration of the secular high festival that is Pride Month.
Naval readiness quickly gave way to the sacred Stonewall monument in service of narrative. Speaking of narrative, the full story of Milk, discharged for homosexuality pre “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and allegedly once in a relationship with a 16-year-old boy, isn’t told here.
Bonilla didn’t explain how pettily renaming a ship as a gotcha for folks who don’t hate gay people as much as he does has anything to do with “readiness” or supposed drag shows.
Alex Christy served up his own complaint in a June 4 post:
MSNBC’s Chris Jansing welcomed former Missouri Attorney General Jason Kander to her Wednesday show to discuss Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering that the USNS Harvey Milk be renamed. Jansing could not tell the difference between civil rights icons and liberal icons as she asked if renaming such ships was “part of a politicization of the armed forces?”
[…]A look at the John Lewis-class reveals that some ships, such as the Harriet Tubman, are named after true civil rights icons, while others, such as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, are just named after liberal heroes, but Jansing could not tell the difference. She asked Kander, “All right. So, Jason, reaction. We heard from one veteran that this does nothing to help crew members prepare for war. I mean, the military has long been something that’s supposed to be outside of politics. Do you see this move as part of a politicization of the armed forces?”
Kander, an Army vet, told Jansing what she wanted to hear, “Yeah. This is what happens when you put a Fox News host in charge of the Pentagon. I mean, everything looks like a tweet, and that’s what he’s doing. I mean, this is like a tweet to troll gay people during Pride Month. I mean, it’s pretty immature. It also is representative of the 80s action movie way that these folks in the Trump Administration see the military.”
He also alluded to allegations of extremism that Hegseth has denied[.]
Christy offered no evidence that Milk is merely a “liberal hero,” or that it was not an extremist partisan act on Hegseth’s part to rename the ship. He also didn’t explain why anyone should accept Hegseth’s denial of extremism at face value. Instead, he whined:
Contrary to Jansing and Kander’s claim, not naming Navy ships after liberal activists will preserve the military’s apolitical nature. At this point, a liberal might object and ask about all the aircraft carriers named after modern Republicans, but all of those were either naval war heroes (Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush), were big champions of naval power by placing the Navy at the forefront of their foreign policy (Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan), or won a world war (Dwight Eisenhower). The only real exception would be the upcoming George W. Bush, which was named by President Biden to accompany the Bill Clinton. To put it in perspective, what would Jansing and Kander’s reaction be if Hegseth decided to name an oiler after Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia?
Christy didn’t mention that neither Scalia nor Thomas served in the Navy, unlike Milk.
The MRC also published a June 5 column by Ben Shapiro cheering the renaming and whining that Milk was a “scurrilous figure” and insisting it was “rather stupid” to name a ship after him.