President Donald Trump on Sept. 5 signed an executive order establishing the Pentagon’s “secondary” name as the “Department of War.”
The directive is an initial step in moving to officially change the Department of Defense’s title, which would require congressional approval.
“This is something we thought long and hard about. We’ve been talking about it for months,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “So we won the First World War, we won the Second World War, everything before that and in between and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense.”
Trump added, “So we’re going to [change it back to the] Department of War.”
DoD was known as the Department of War from 1789 to 1947. Under the executive order, the Defense Secretary would also have the “secondary” title of “Secretary of War.”
The administration wasted little time rebranding a website on the history of the Department of Defense to the history of the Department of War. In 1947, President Harry Truman (D) consolidated the various military branches into the National Military Establishment, according to the website. In 1949, the National Military Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this article.