President Donald Trump proposed on Aug. 25 that his administration rename the Department of Defense to its previous name, the Department of War.
“Pete, you started off by saying ’the Department of Defense.’ And somehow it didn’t sound good to me,” Trump said in the Oval Office, speaking to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, after signing executive orders on fighting crime, including in Washington.
“Defense. What are we, defense? Why are we defense? It used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound. And, as you know, we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything. Now we have a Department of Defense. We’re defenders. I don’t know.”
Hegseth, standing behind Trump, said the name change is on the way.
“That’s coming soon, sir,” he told Trump.
Trump said that “Department of War” sounds better than “Department of Defense.”
“Defense? I don’t want to be Defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too, if that’s OK,” he said, adding that “as Department of War, we won everything, we won everything. And I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”
Trump touted bringing an end to conflicts between India and Pakistan and the Congo and Rwanda.
“You know it used to be called secretary of war,” Trump told reporters on June 25 at the NATO summit in the Netherlands. “Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors.”
He introduced Hegseth as “secretary of war.”
“Then we became politically correct and they called it secretary of defense,” Trump said. “Maybe we’ll have to think about changing it. But we feel that way.”
Prior to becoming defense secretary, Hegseth called for changing the Defense Department back to its old name.
“But ultimately its job is to conduct war. We either win or lose wars. And we have warriors, not ‘defenders. Bringing back the War Department may remind a few people in Washington, D.C., what the military is supposed to do, and do well.”
