President Donald Trump has considered renaming the Pentagon to the “Department of War.”
“Why are we ‘Defense?’ So it used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound,” he told reporters from the Oval Office. “As you know, we won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything, and now we have a Department of Defense.”
“If you people want to, standing behind me, if you take a little vote, if you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that’s OK with me. All right?” Trump said.
“I don’t want to be defense only,” Trump added. “We want defense, but we want offense too.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in response that the name change is “coming soon.”
In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which renamed the War Department to the Defense Department.
“The legislation merges the Navy and War Departments and the newly independent Air Force into a single organization called the National Military Establishment led by a civilian secretary of defense who also oversees the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” a statement on the Defense Department’s website says. “In addition, the act creates the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Security Resources Board.”
