Maddow Blog-Trump expresses interest in rolling back the clock to bring back the 'Department of War'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Would the president change the "Department of Defense" back to the "Department of War"? He sounds increasingly serious about the idea.

In March, Trump and his team got the ball rolling on changing the "Department of Defense" back to the "Department of War."

Three months later, at the NATO summit, he suggested he’s not kidding about this. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-06-25T17:33:06.845Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-expresses-interest-rolling-back-clock-bring-back-department-war-rcna215029

Donald Trump and his team have been fixated in recent months on renaming things. From the Gulf of Mexico to the USNS Harvey Milk, from Veterans Day to the Persian Gulf, the president and his administration have made it painfully clear: They’re not satisfied with names and labels that much of the public finds familiar, and they’re eager to impose new ones.

Evidently, we can add the name of one of the nation’s oldest departments to the list. USA Today reported:

President Donald Trump suggested changing the name of Defense Department back to its pre-World War II moniker as the War Department, after the success in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. ‘You know it used to be called secretary of war,’ Trump told reporters June 25 at the conclusion of a NATO meeting in the Netherlands. ‘Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors.’

The Republican did not appear to be kidding. In fact, at his NATO press conference, the American president referred to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as the “secretary of war” and reflected on the title that hasn’t existed in a few generations. Trump added, “It used to be ‘secretary of war’; then we became politically correct. ‘Secretary of defense,’ maybe we’ll have to start thinking about changing it.”
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lsgsjsiznr2q

Link to tweet

While it’s true that the United States had a Department of War, which was renamed in the years following World War II, it’s also worth noting how absurd his interpretation of modern history is. Kevin Kruse, a historian at Princeton University, sarcastically explained via Bluesky, “Yeah, when historians discuss the National Security Act of 1947, we absolutely stress how the centralization of American military power under the new Department of Defense at the dawn of the Cold War was all about being ‘politically correct.’”....

I’m not making any predictions about the White House’s next moves, especially given Trump’s limited attention span, but if he actually tries to roll back the clock on the department’s name — because, as the president put it, he and his team “feel like warriors” — no one should say we weren’t warned.

[markodochartaigh]

1. War fighters are what give the

Homeland the Freedom Experience.

/s

I really believe that this regime tries to aim for the level of the less intelligent boys in the sixth grade.

[Irish_Dem]

2. He wants it to be called Department of Trump.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. If we can get back to 1917 mustard gas will be great again

No limits on our halcyon past if you keep going backward.

[maveric]

4. I think of "Duck Soup"

Marx Brothers anti-war movie.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. MaddowBlog-Trump wants to rebrand the Defense Department as the 'Department of War'

The president insisted that he and his team were “gonna change the name” of the Defense Department. As it turns out, that isn’t quite right.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-rebrand-defense-department-department-war-rcna229303

It would be far more accurate to say that Trump likes to pretend he’s good at branding, and that leads him in some unfortunate directions. NBC News reported on Trump’s upcoming executive order to add “Department of War” as the secondary title of the Defense Department:

The order, which Trump is expected to sign in the Oval Office, won’t rename the Defense Department, but it will authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use secondary titles like ‘secretary of war’ and ‘Department of War’ in official correspondence and public communications and during formal ceremonies, according to a White House preview of the order. Trump will require all executive departments and agencies to ‘recognize and accommodate these secondary titles in internal and external communications.’

......At a White House event last week, a reporter reminded the president that it would require an act of Congress to rename a Cabinet agency. He replied, “We’re just gonna do it.”

The comment now makes more sense: Trump isn’t renaming the department; he’s wrapping a new skin around it like a cheap sedan.

We’ve been headed down this path for much of the year. The first hint came in March, when the president published an item to his social media platform that referred in passing to the Pentagon as “the Department of War.” A few months later, he reiterated his interest in the change and even referred to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth as the “secretary of war.”.....

On the other hand, Trump has also destabilized international alliances and institutions, announced plans to acquire countries that don’t appear to have any interest in joining the United States, launched a preemptive strike against Iran, militarized his own country’s capital, mused about launching military strikes against targets in Mexico and Central America, boasted about a military strike against a civilian boat in international waters and is now rebranding the Pentagon — because “we want offense, too.”

If he’s still angling to get that Nobel, he might want to lower his expectations.

trump knows that he does not have votes in congress to officially change the name and so is playing a game here

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. It is still the Department of Defense