A Mess Attendant Ran Toward The Guns. A President Had Bone Spurs.

One of them is about to lose an aircraft carrier to the other.

A Mess Attendant Ran Toward The Guns. A President Had Bone Spurs.

One of them is about to lose an aircraft carrier to the other.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,006: Saturday, August 22nd, 2026

Let me tell you what a man did on a Tuesday morning in December of 1941…and then… let me tell you what’s being done to him…now.

Doris Miller was collecting laundry.

That was the job. Mess attendant. Son of a sharecropper…grandson of slaves…out of Waco, Texas.

In a segregated Navy…that would not let a Black man touch a weapon…his role was essentially personal servant to white officers. He made their beds. He carried their food. He gathered their dirty shirts.

Then…the first Japanese torpedo hit the USS West Virginia.

His battle station was destroyed. He was ordered to the bridge…where he helped carry the ship’s mortally wounded captain out of the fire.

Then…he found a .50 caliber anti-aircraft gun; a weapon he had never been trained on… had never been permitted to be trained on…because of the color of his skin…and he loaded it…and fired it at aircraft that were killing his shipmates.

He is credited with bringing down at least one plane.

And…when the order came to abandon ship…Doris Miller did not abandon ship. He stayed. He pulled men out of burning water.

Admiral Nimitz pinned the Navy Cross on him in May of 1942.

Two years later…he was killed in action…at twenty-four years old, aboard the escort carrier Liscome Bay.

Now Here’s This Week

The Navy is reportedly working to strip his name off the aircraft carrier that was going to carry it.

CVN-81. Under construction right now…at Newport News.

And…two sources told CNN…there have been internal conversations about naming it after Donald Trump instead.

Go ahead…puke, throw up…vomit. I’ll wait. I understand.

Naming a carrier…after a sitting president…would be unprecedented. Never. Been. Done. Not for Roosevelt…not for Eisenhower…not for Reagan…men who waited until they were dead…which is traditionally considered good manners in these matters.

But here’s the part I want you to appreciate, because it’s almost too perfect:

Trump’s own administration named that ship after Miller.

January 20th, 2020. Martin Luther King Day. A ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly announced it…with Miller’s family standing right there…and said Miller stood for everything good about this country.

First carrier in American history named for an enlisted sailor. First named for a Black American.

So…this isn’t taking something from Joe Biden. It’s taking something from himself…six years later…because apparently the version of him that existed in 2020 was insufficiently attentive to the branding opportunity.

The Tell Is In The Paperwork

Here’s how you know somebody knows he’s doing something shabby.

He stops saying the name out loud.

Per the reporting…the Navy has effectively quit calling it the USS Doris Miller internally. It’s just CVN-81 now.

And…the executive order Trump signed on August 13th…the one about shipbuilding…the one that also rips out the electromagnetic catapults to put steam back in….refers to the ship only as CVN-81.

Not a word about Miller. Not…one…damn…word.

That’s not an oversight. That’s a name…being sanded off a hull…before anybody notices.

Meanwhile…the acting Secretary of the Navy…is reportedly rewriting the official guidance on how ships get named…to specify who’s eligible. Including presidents.

You don’t rewrite the rulebook…unless the current rulebook says “no.” You don’t. And, everyone knows that.

And Now, The Consolation Prize

Don’t worry. They’ve thought about Miller.

The plan…according to sources…is to name some other ship after him. A smaller one. And…to recommend him for the Medal of Honor.

Now…Miller absolutely should have the Medal of Honor. He’s deserved it for eighty-five years…and…it’s a disgrace…that segregation cost him one.

But…look at the transaction being proposed here.

We’ll take the carrier. You get a destroyer and a medal.

And…who has to approve that medal? Congress…and the President.

So the offer is: surrender the honor he already had…in exchange for one that Donald Trump personally controls.

That’s not a tribute. That’s a hostage negotiation…with a dead man.

His great-nephew told CNN the family wasn’t even notified about the Medal of Honor recommendation. They found out…the same way you did. Need to hurl…or vomit again. Go ahead. Take your time.

Let’s Put These Two Men Side By Side

I’ll be brief, because the comparison does its own work.

One man was denied training on a weapon…because of his race…and picked it up anyway when it mattered.

The other…received five draft deferments during Vietnam…one of them for bone spurs in his heels.

One man stayed aboard a burning ship after being ordered off…to pull other men out of the water.

The other…this month…said of a carrier crew that just set the Navy record for consecutive days at sea…no port call in over 200 days…families going to reporters about the food…and the plumbing…and the mental health care…that it hadn’t gone on nearly long enough.

One man’s name would have been the first enlisted sailor…and the first Black American to be honored that way in the history of the fleet.

The other one wants the boat.

The NAACP put it about as plainly as it can be put: Miller earned his place through courage and sacrifice…and Trump only wants to serve himself.

What This Actually Is

A carrier name…is not a plaque. It’s a sentence the country says…about itself…out loud…for fifty years…in every port on earth.

USS Doris Miller says: we were wrong about who could be a hero…and we found out …on a Tuesday morning in 1941…and we’re not going to pretend otherwise.

CVN-81 says nothing. Which is the point.

The Pentagon says it has nothing to announce. The keel-laying is scheduled for the end of this year…which means the name gets locked soon.

So…there’s still time for somebody with a spine to say no.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Eighty-five years ago…a mess attendant…who wasn’t allowed to touch a gun…ran toward one anyway…and stayed on a sinking ship to pull strangers out of burning water.

This week…some men (if you want to call them that) in an office…are trying to take his name off a boat…quietly…using a hull number…hoping nobody looks up.

One of those groups of people is brave.

I’ll let you…work out which.

Sources

• Navy weighs renaming carrier slated to honor Black war hero, potentially switching it to Trump — CNN (original reporting)

• Navy mulls stripping Black war hero’s name from aircraft carrier for Trump — ABC News

• Navy discusses renaming aircraft carrier after Trump instead of heroic Black sailor — NBC News

• Navy discusses renaming aircraft carrier after Trump, instead of Black war hero — MS NOW (full NAACP statement)

• US Navy Names Aircraft Carrier After Texas WWII Hero Doris Miller — CBS News, January 2020 (the original naming ceremony)

• Unpacking the claim USS Doris Miller will be renamed after Trump — Snopes (verification status and the Aug. 13 executive order)