President Donald Trump managed to dismiss generations of U.S. military heroes on Friday during his announcement that he was changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
“We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between, and then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to Department of Defense,” Trump complained on Friday.
While the name change had been long anticipated due to the president regularly bringing it up in public, he made it official during an Oval Office order signing session on Friday afternoon.
The Department of Defense has had the name since 1949. It was changed by an act of Congress following World War II, but the president has insisted he did not need Congress to act to change it back.
The president praised the U.S. military equipment as the best in the world and touted the greatest soldiers in the world, but he continued to disparage those who fought for the U.S. in multiple wars since WWII.
“We should have won every war,” Trump said. “We could have won every war. But we, we really chose to be very politically correct or wokey.”
The president has never served in the U.S. military and received five deferments throughout the Vietnam War.
Trump did not name the wars the U.S. has participated in but not “won” during his Oval Office remarks, but he did elude to them.
“We just fight forever,” Trump said. “We wouldn’t lose really. We just fight, sort of tie. We never wanted to win wars that every one of them we would have won easily with just a couple of little changes or just a couple of little edicts.”
The president suggested that going back to the Department of War was a “much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”
During his announcement, the president was joined by Defense Secretary turned “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth, who lavished praise on his boss.
“This name change is not just about renaming. It’s about restoring,” said the former Fox News host. “Words matter. It’s restoring, as you’ve gotten us to Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory and clarity as an end state, restoring intentionality to the use of force.”
Hegseth said the department would “go on offense, not just on defense” and claimed they were going to “raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
Later, while answering questions from reporters, the president repeated his claim that the U.S. could have won every war but “never fought to win.”
“We didn’t lose anything, but we didn’t fight to win,” he repeated.
The president dismissed the suggestion that rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War did not square with his effort to brand himself the “President of Peace.”
The president instead repeated his claims that, since returning to office, he has settled multiple wars that “could not be settled.”
The president rejected the idea that it would take an act of Congress to officially change the name of the Defense Department. He said he did not know if they would codify his order.
Trump also brushed off the cost of the rebranding, which could be in the billions, thus clashing with the Pentagon’s efforts to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.”
“We know how to rebrand without having to go crazy,” Trump said. “We’re going to start changing the stationery as it comes due and lots of things like that.”
The “War” effort has been met with mixed reactions. GOP Senator Mike Lee introduced legislation in Congress this week to rename the Defense Department.
However, Senator Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut and combat veteran, torched Trump for the name change effort.
“Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War,” he wrote in a blistering reference to the president.
The post Trump Dismisses Generations of Military Heroes as ‘Woke’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
