Republicans love the flag and the National Anthem, but they don’t know the history of either. Enter Herschel Walker. After Donald Trump rewrote the 1814 Battle of Baltimore by pushing it 100 years into the future so the nascent US military could take over airports. Now Walker is claiming that Francis Scott Key wasn’t just a lawyer trying to secure the release of a friend, but was instead someone who had the power to command Fort McHenry.
For the record: No bodies were found at the base of the flagpole at the end of the battle. Only four people were killed at Fort McHenry; none were used to prop up the flag. And the flag that Key saw the next morning wasn’t the same flag that had flown throughout the night: the commander of the fort’s garrison had the flag replaced at 9 a.m. because the original flag, a smaller storm flag, was soaked and clinging to the flag pole. Key saw the larger garrison flag flying, which prompted him to write the poem “The Star Spangled Banner,” which was set to the music of British drinking song and did not become the National Anthem until nearly 120 years later, largely thanks to a campaign undertaken by Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe It or Not fame.