Trump Wants to Rename Department of Defense

Articles | August 25, 2025 | by Catholics for Catholics

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The President wants it changed to its original name, The Department of War.

By Catholics for Catholics

Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.

President Donald Trump wants to change the name of the Department of Defense to 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 crime-fighting.

“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.”

According to The Epoch Times, Hegseth, standing behind Trump on Monday, said the name change is on the way. “That’s coming soon, sir,” he told Trump.

Trump says he wants to rename the Department of Defense back to the Department of War. pic.twitter.com/a7pvBDMQHs

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 25, 2025

Trump said: “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.”

“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.”

Trump 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.”