This is a short transcript excerpt of a speech announcing an executive order to rename the U.S. Department of Defense back to the Department of War. The speaker (Donald Trump) frames the change as reclaiming a historical lineage, criticizes the prior name as "woke," and emphasizes U.S. military supremacy and equipment superiority.
Chapters
Today with this executive order, you will authorize the current Secretary of Defense and the current Department of Defense to once again embrace this great lineage and once again be named the Secretary of War and 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. So we're going Department of War. And I'd like to ask our secretary of War to say a few words. Pete Hegseth. I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now. We have the strongest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world. We have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far. There's nobody to even compete. And you see that with this and so many other things. The patriots are the best. Every element of the military, we make the best by far.