The White House has backtracked on President Donald Trump‘s grand plans to rename Veterans Day just a day after he posted the idea to social media.
“I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I,“ the president wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. November 11 has been known as Veterans Day since 1954.
“We are not renaming Veterans Day,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC News on Friday. “It will just be an additional proclamation that goes out on that day.”
It’s unclear what an “additional proclamation” would entail. The day has been celebrated as a national holiday to honor those who have undertaken military service since 1918 and marks the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. The holiday was renamed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, following the Korean War, in accordance with the campaigning of veterans’ groups. However, renaming Veterans Day requires an act of Congress, something the White House seems to suggest the president is unwilling to pursue.
“Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II,” Trump’s late-night Thursday post continued.
Critics were quick to point out that Victory Day—or V.E. Day—is only celebrated in Europe to mark the date of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. As all high-school textbooks will attest, America continued to fight World War II until the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15 of that year.
The factual oversight prompted MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to brand Trump “A complete moron.”
We won World War II on August 15, 1945 when the Japanese surrendered. Trump is a complete moron. pic.twitter.com/teHhJ1u3Rh
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) May 2, 2025
Veterans advocacy groups have rejected the name change idea, arguing that a focus on the World Wars excludes veterans who served in later conflicts, many of which have had no outright ‘victory’.
“Veterans Day should be an acknowledgment of the ways that fellow Americans have served and sacrificed to protect and defend what we have in America,” Allison Jaslow, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America told The New York Times. “It is not the veterans’ fault if we don’t win wars.”
Celebrating only the veterans of WWI and WWII would see 99 percent of living veterans excluded—just 66,000 of them remain out of the 15.8 million American veterans, according to a 2023 census. Notably, that number includes Vice President J.D. Vance, who served in Iraq, but excludes Trump who avoided the Vietnam War draft on account of his alleged “bone spurs.” Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2019 that Trump confessed to fabricating the injury. “You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam,” Trump reportedly told Cohen.
“We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything—That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so!” Trump’s post read. “We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”
With the latest reversal from the White House, the renaming of Veterans Day appears to be one “victory” that the administration won’t be celebrating any time soon.
The post White House Tanks Trump’s Big Idea to Rename Veterans Day appeared first on The Daily Beast.
