{"id":46122,"date":"2025-08-25T22:58:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T22:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=46122"},"modified":"2026-07-10T02:43:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T02:43:16","slug":"trump-says-he-wants-department-of-war-instead-of-defense-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2025\/08\/25\/trump-says-he-wants-department-of-war-instead-of-defense-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says he wants \u2018Department of War\u2019 instead of defense department"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Donald Trump<\/strong>&nbsp;just said for the third time today that he plans to rebrand the \u201cDepartment of Defense\u201d by returning to the pre-1947 name, the \u201cDepartment of War\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The president, whose pre-politics business career was largely focused on marketing, first raised the idea on Monday morning, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, standing behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSo Pete, you started off by saying the \u2018Department of Defense\u2019, and somehow it didn\u2019t sound good to me, you know, it didn\u2019t sound good. \u2018Defense\u2019 what are we \u2018defense\u2019, why are we \u2018defense\u2019? So it used to be called the \u2018Department of War\u2019 and it had a stronger sound\u201d, the president said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He then told the handful of officials lined up behind him \u2013 namely: JD Vance, the vice-president; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff; Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration; and Hegseth \u2013 \u201cif you people want to, standing behind me, if you take a little vote and you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that\u2019s okay with me\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later, while taking questions alongside the president of South Korea,&nbsp;<strong>Lee Jae Myung<\/strong>, Trump again raised the idea, out of the blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPete Hegseth has been incredible with the, as I call it, the \u2018Department of War\u2019. You know, we call it the \u2018Department of Defense\u2019, but, between us, I think we\u2019re going to change the name\u201d, Trump said during a riff about border security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By way of explanation, the president added: \u201cWe won the World War I, World War II, it was called the \u2018Department of War\u2019. And to me, that\u2019s really what it is\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/866ilSBIVCE?wmode=opaque&amp;feature=oembedDonald Trump said on Monday that he wants to change the name of the \u2018Department of Defense\u2019 back to the \u2018Department of War\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trump raised the idea a third time during a meeting on Monday afternoon with family members of 13 US military personnel who were killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber, along with 170 Afghan civilians, at Hamid Karzai International Airport\u2019s Abbey Gate in 2021, as the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asked by a reporter how he plans to rename the defense department the \u2018Department of War\u2019, since that would require an act of Congress,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/cspan\/status\/1960072433760706827\">Trump said<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019re just going to do it. I\u2019m sure Congress will go along, if we need that, I don\u2019t think we even need that\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt just to me, seems like a just a much more appropriate\u2026 the other is, \u2018Defense is too defensive. And we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be. So, it just sounded to me better\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump&nbsp;just said for the third time today that he plans to rebrand the \u201cDepartment of Defense\u201d by returning to the pre-1947 name, the \u201cDepartment of War\u201d. The president, whose pre-politics business career was largely focused on marketing, first raised the idea on Monday morning, while signing executive orders in the Oval Office with his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":46123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461,12],"tags":[4342,5754,11133,9204,887,6848,6693,11943,11942,11273,5455,10954,13157,11348,9515,6690,12649,9833,5572,12083,5424,3805,5655,7185,1664,7391,5020,9262,184,6348,9516,5251,13067,36,594,9550],"class_list":["post-46122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world-news","tag-afghanistan","tag-airport","tag-bondi","tag-border","tag-chief-of-staff","tag-civilians","tag-congress","tag-department-of-defence","tag-department-of-war","tag-drug","tag-family","tag-international","tag-islamic","tag-jd-vance","tag-killed","tag-korea","tag-kristi-noem","tag-meeting","tag-military","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-politics","tag-president","tag-security","tag-south-korea","tag-stephen","tag-suicide","tag-the-vice-president","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-president-donald-john-trump-jr","tag-us","tag-us-military","tag-war","tag-wars","tag-world","tag-who","tag-youtube"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46124,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46122\/revisions\/46124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}