| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| These are two of the headlines from today's newspaper, starting first with the New York Times. | ||
| President of Peace sends mixed signals with Department of War and this from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| It's Andy Kessler writing that the War Department is a good start. | ||
| We want to hear your reactions this morning to that name change, that rebranding of the Department of Defense. | ||
| Phone numbers are on your screen for you. | ||
| Again, a special line for active and retired military. | ||
| 202-748-8003 is that number. | ||
| As you're calling in, this was President Trump from the Oval Office last week. | ||
| We've been talking about this Department of War. | ||
| So 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 Hanks said, 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. | ||
| So, Pete, I'd like to ask you and maybe Dan Raising to say a few words, please. | ||
| Mr. President, thank you. | ||
| After winning a war for independence in 1789, George Washington established the War Department, and Henry Knox was his first Secretary of War. | ||
| And this country won every major war after that, to include World War I and World War II. | ||
| Total victory, Mr. President, as you said. | ||
| Then 150 years after that, we changed the name after World War II from the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947. | ||
| And as you put it up, Mr. President, we haven't won a major war since. | ||
| And that's not to disparage our warfighters, whether it's the Korean War or the Vietnam War or our generation of Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| That's to recognize that this name change is not just about renaming. | ||
| It's about restoring. | ||
| Words matter. | ||
| It's restoring, as you've guided us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos. | ||
| That was Friday in the Oval Office. | ||
| This is Monday morning here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're asking you about this name change. | ||
| We'll go through some of the reaction over the weekend, but we mostly just want to hear from you on phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. | ||
| And a special line that we'll go to for active and retired military 202748-8003 is that number. | ||
| Meanwhile, this is Friday from Senator Jean Shaheen, Democrat, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| Her reaction to that announcement. | ||
| I have real concerns about the impact of this kind of an effort on the readiness of our men and women in the military. | ||
| I sit on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate, and we are struggling for resources and dealing with conflicts around the world that we haven't seen in my lifetime. | ||
| It is a very dangerous environment. | ||
| And for the President and the Secretary of Defense to spend time and energy is a distraction from what we need to do to focus on the readiness of our troops who are serving. | ||
| And it's nothing more than an effort to distract from other issues that are going on in the country as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| Democratic Senator Gene Shaheen, that was on Friday. | ||
| This was Senator Mitch McConnell, also from Friday after that announcement. | ||
| On X, the former Senate Majority Leader wrote, if we call it the Department of War, we better equip the military to actually prevent and win wars. | ||
| We can't preserve American primacy if we're unwilling to spend substantially more on our military than Carter or Biden. | ||
| Peace through strength requires investment and not just rebranding, said the Republican from Kentucky. | ||
| Plenty more reaction in the editorial pages and opinion pages of newspapers over the weekend. | ||
| Like I said, we'll go through them this morning, but we mostly just want to hear from you. | ||
| This is Crystal, starting first in Hollywood, Florida. | ||
| What's your reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't agree with it. | |
| I think it brings out a very negative light to it. | ||
| It's only promoting more, to me, more danger, more negative responses. | ||
| And all this doesn't breed, just breed detriment, sounds like, to me. | ||
| It's not breeding peace. | ||
| It's breeding more war. | ||
| That's Crystal. | ||
| This is Chantel, Trinity, Texas, Independent. | ||
| Your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I think it's, one, it's not a good idea because it gives a bad impression. | ||
| War is not an image that you want to project, especially in the situation. | ||
| And the cost to do this, all of the letterheads, all of the badges, all of the media, all of everything that has to be changed, it's going to cost a lot of money. | ||
| They've wasted enough money. | ||
| And I think it's a terrible idea. | ||
| That's Chantel on the name change on the cost, Politico, with a story about it putting the potential cost in perhaps billions of dollars. | ||
| The details of the order signed Friday, still vague, they write, but officials may need to change the Defense Department seals on more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries in all 50 states. | ||
| This also includes everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to the napkins and chow halls and the embroidered jackets for Senate confirmed officials and keychains and tchotchkis in the Pentagon store. | ||
| A story about everything that this name change could mean. | ||
| The order coming from the White House, though congressional legislation may follow. | ||
| Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, have introduced legislation to codify this into law. | ||
| And Rick Scott with his tweet, his ex-post from Friday saying the Department of War, the president is leading the way. | ||
| Now, let's pass our bill to codify this name change as soon as possible. | ||
| And then Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, his reaction to this news. | ||
| Trump ran as a peace candidate. | ||
| The guy who would end wars, what a joke. | ||
| He wants a Department of Wars. | ||
| The wars in Ukraine and Gaza are worse than when he was elected, and he's after starting a new war in Venezuela, some of the congressional reaction. | ||
| This is Sonny in Newark, New Jersey. | ||
| Democrat, what's your reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello. | |
| Go ahead, Sonny. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, my concern: this guy changing names. | |
| He had bone spurs on his streets. | ||
| He's removed and said, This guy's a total disgrace. | ||
| This president is a disgrace to this country. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| He's a total disgrace. | ||
| I'm a child of it. | ||
| He came out of hospital in 82 going to school. | ||
| This guy is a total disgrace. | ||
| I was just surprised to see some stuff come out of his face. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's Sonny in New Jersey. | ||
| The New York Times in their piece today about this name change. | ||
| Also, made sure to note Donald Trump's deferments from being drafted into Vietnam, noting that he was granted five deferments from being drafted, including for a diagnosis of bone spurs, quoting the president as saying the country had never fought a war to win after World War II when Congress renamed the Department of War the Department of Defense. | ||
| We'll go through some of that history, but first here's Duga in New York City, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| As a Republican, I support the president, but this part right here, I do not support it. | ||
| Let's say in a few years when he leaves office, the next president that comes in, if he's not a Republican, he will take that out. | ||
| So this is like a waste of time. | ||
| We should concentrate on other things. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Duga, what are some of those other things we should concentrate on? | ||
|
unidentified
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The economy, immigration, as always. | |
| I mean, so many things that we need to work on it. | ||
| For example, education, infrastructure. | ||
| I mean, the whole nine years, this is not an urgency. | ||
| This is just something that, I mean, is the president, he can decide whatever he wants, but this is not urgent to me. | ||
| That's Duga. | ||
| The president already referring to his Department of War in a social media post on his true social page that got a whole lot of attention over the weekend, including from newspaper reporters in Chicago, his social post focusing on Chicago, quoting the movie Apocalypse Now. | ||
| I love the smell, and he says the president of deportations in the morning rather than napalm was the original quote. | ||
| The president saying Chicago is about to find out why it's called the Department of War. | ||
| Chapocalypse Now is the image that was posted alongside that. | ||
| President Trump in Apocalypse Now regalia there, the helicopters, and then the image of Chicago in the background. | ||
| Like we said, that got a lot of attention over the weekend, and the president was asked about it yesterday of whether he was declaring war on Chicago in that post. | ||
| this was the president's reaction. | ||
|
unidentified
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Listen. | |
| You don't listen. | ||
| You never listen. | ||
| That's why you're second grade. | ||
| We're not going to war. | ||
| We're going to clean up our cities. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're going to clean them up so they don't kill five people every weekend. | |
| That's not war. | ||
| That's common sense. | ||
| That was the president yesterday. | ||
| This was the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, writing that the President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. | ||
| This is not a joke. | ||
| This is not normal. | ||
| Donald Trump isn't a strong man. | ||
| He's a scared man. | ||
| Illinois won't be intimidated by a wannabe dictator, showing the image of the president's true social posting from Saturday. | ||
| Charles is in Tennessee. | ||
| Democrat, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Thank you for taking my call this morning. | ||
| Well, here we go again. | ||
| The Democrats are falling right in. | ||
| They're hollering about all this stuff. | ||
| And I mean, I'm calling them, and I'll get to my point. | ||
| This is just to get people's mind off this other upstate stuff. | ||
| Look at what the economy is doing. | ||
| Jobs is lost this quarter. | ||
| Unemployment's up. | ||
| It's about diversion. | ||
| That's all this is about, you know. | ||
| And this is a dictator-type move. | ||
| There's no doubt about that. | ||
| But it's just to divert. | ||
| The upstate stuff, we've flattened down about head. | ||
| Ain't nobody hearing about head. | ||
| The high unemployment numbers going up, inflation going up, John Deere moving out of the farther stuff out of the country this month or within the next year. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's all about diversion. | |
| Well, you look at all of Ukraine. | ||
| Russia just slaughtering Ukraine now. | ||
| We're supposed to be pro-life over here. | ||
| They're just slaughtering kids and everything else over there. | ||
| But that's all it's about. | ||
| It's just a diversion. | ||
| It ain't about going to these cities. | ||
| And Claude. | ||
| If he did, he'd be down here in Tennessee, part of Tennessee, Georgia. | ||
| The South down here has got a higher crime rate or more than maybe not Chicago, but absolutely more than Washington had. | ||
| So put them down here if he wants to put them somewhere. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I'm not doing nothing that I'm going to get arrested for. | ||
| But this is all about diverting people from the real issues out there. | ||
| I mean, look at our health care thing. | ||
| It's a falling down. | ||
| Our old people six get cut off of Medicare and take care. | ||
| We're taking all these tariffs. | ||
| Everything is getting high. | ||
| Look at the price of food stuff. | ||
| It's getting high. | ||
| People can't afford it. | ||
| This is all just to divert off of that. | ||
| But thank you. | ||
| You fellas have a good night. | ||
| We appreciate you guys a lot. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Charles in the volunteer state. | ||
| Alex, that line for veterans from Bowie, Maryland. | ||
| Go ahead, Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
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Howdy, I'm from Bowie, Maryland. | |
| And yeah, I retired from the Air Force. | ||
| And I actually gave a false first name because of creeping paranoia. | ||
| I'm not psychotic or anything. | ||
| It's just these days, you don't know who's going to track you down the way these Trumpian things are happening. | ||
| So I do believe we have a creeping dictatorship. | ||
| I've seen evidence of it. | ||
| I was in D.C. yesterday and saw the occupation forces. | ||
| But I'll tell you about this change of the name. | ||
| It does appeal to me in a way of the idea of having a Department of War because to me, the idea of a Department of Defense was a little dishonest in the first place because it was always about war. | ||
| And even we say, even watch clock, a broken clock is right twice a day, right? | ||
| So I believe this is one of those Trumpian ideas that was inspired by some good writer somewhere that actually does have a strong appeal, you know, like Hedgeh said today. | ||
| Alex, is it worth whatever billions of dollars it may take to make this name change? | ||
|
unidentified
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Not at all. | |
| Not at all. | ||
| It's a joke. | ||
| It's just, like I say, my knee-jerk reaction was to say, yeah, that sounds pretty good. | ||
| And I'm afraid it's going to be the one that millions of people are going to have, millions of men in particular are going to have. | ||
| And it's going to be what stays with them. | ||
| That's Alex or somebody else, Alex using the name Alex this morning in Bowie, Maryland. | ||
| This is Sid in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, also on that line for former military. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I think this is really foolish changing the name to Department of War. | |
| What are we going to achieve with all the billions of dollars spent to do this when we have other wars going on around the world and we have important issues at home that need to be addressed? | ||
| Changing the name to Department of War really does not make sense. | ||
| It's stupidity. | ||
| Just like he ruined the relationship with India in just one week and created another world order. | ||
| This is just foolish. | ||
| That's my take on it. | ||
| That's Sid in Maryland this morning. | ||
| Garrett Graff is a historian. | ||
| His latest book is about making the atomic bomb. | ||
| He's also done a book on D-Day, a book on 9-11, and several other books. | ||
| He was at the National Book Festival over the weekend. | ||
| He also writes a sub-stack and took up the history of the name change to the Department of War and the background here. | ||
| This is just some from his sub-stack post, and you can find it the name of his substack doomsday scenario. | ||
| He writes, the War Department was one of the first parts of the U.S. government dating back to 1798. | ||
| But what it really oversaw was just the Army. | ||
| There was a separate Department of the Navy, which was also established in 1798, which was the only military branch specifically authorized in the Constitution by Article 1, Section 8, and which also oversaw the Marine Corps. | ||
| The founders, he writes, for obvious reasons, were deeply wary of standing armies. | ||
| And so the goal and plan for most of the country's history was that while we always would have a Department of the Navy chugging along, the War Department shrunk down massively in peacetime and only really bulked up during an actual war. | ||
| At the end of the 1800s, for instance, the Army was just 39,000 people, about 1/12th the size of the French Army. | ||
| And even on the eve of World War II, the U.S. Army ranked only 19th in the world, smaller than the standing army of Portugal. | ||
| He goes on to say it was after World War II that the U.S. began to think differently about its world obligations and what it meant for the military. | ||
| After the war, policymakers began to talk about a new concept called national security. | ||
| He writes, as the Cold War started, Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947, which created a unified structure known as the National Military Establishment, which brought together the War Department and the Navy Department, created a new Department of the Air Force, as well as created the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council and the CIA and other hallmarks of our post-war national security apparatus. | ||
| Interestingly, he writes, for the first time, all the nation's armed services were under the same roof and authority, but two years later, the so-called NME was renamed officially to the Department of Fence of Defense, in part allegedly because the acronym for the National Military Establishment sounded too much like the word enemy. | ||
| The Department of Defense, he writes, was something new at that time. | ||
| Some of the history there, Garrett Graff, historian, you can see him on C-SPAN, plenty of appearances in the C-SPAN archive. | ||
| Back to your phone calls. | ||
| That line for current and former military. | ||
| This is Sean in Milton, Florida. | ||
| What are your thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just wordplay again because these guys are insecure about their positions and about their effectiveness, and they feel that they have to make these grand gestures in order for them to become some kind of confident warrior. | |
| I was in the Navy for 21 years, and every time things got slow, they came up with new terminology to make us all feel better about ourselves. | ||
| And it's a waste of money, and it's a waste of time, and I think it's foolishness. | ||
| Beth is in Florida, Republican. | ||
| Your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm a former DOD employee for 10 years. | ||
| My husband had 33 years of the DOD and his four years in service. | ||
| Both my parents are disabled veterans or were disabled veterans of World War II and go back in the family all the way back to the Revolutionary War with military members in the family. | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| If you look over the last couple of years, the Republicans have been talking about having a war machine, a lethal killing machine. | ||
| And Pete Hegseth took up that line when he came in as secretary. | ||
| And he's a little pissant that thinks working out in the gym makes you a warrior. | ||
| And Beth, you call in on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Are you a Republican? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I do. | |
| And I have been a Republican, a registered Republican since 1972. | ||
| I have been a Republican since I was five years old, and my father took me to vote for Eisenhower. | ||
| My parents suffered after World War II. | ||
| They know the cost of war. | ||
| We changed the Department of War to the Department of Defense. | ||
| We created a United Nations to not have any more wars. | ||
| We created NATO to be a defensive, not an offensive, but a defensive organization. | ||
| Pete Hegseth, the Republicans, they call their committees in the House weaponization committees. | ||
| Trump has gone to war with the American people. | ||
| He's going into cities, bringing in the National Guard, bringing in the Marines, talking about bringing the military into cities that he has no business doing anything with, because tell me where in Article II, the Commander-in-Chief can go into cities without the governor's request. | ||
| That's Beth in Florida on going into cities and the president's post over the weekend about Chicago saying that Chicago is about to find out why it's called the Department of War, that true social post that got so much of attention, so much so that it was the topic of conversations yesterday on the Sunday shows. | ||
| This is from CBS's Face the Nation, Senator Tammy Duckworth, a veteran Democrat senator from Illinois. | ||
| This is what she had to say. | ||
| I think he's renaming the Department of Defense or Department of War. | ||
| And did he not just say that Chicago will find out what it means to be at war? | ||
| I take what the President of the United States says very seriously because that is the respect you have to give to the office. | ||
| And if that's what he's declaring, then let me make it clear. | ||
| It would be an illegal order to declare war on a major city, any city within the United States by the President of the United States. | ||
| Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, yesterday, this is that line for veterans and military. | ||
| This is Darren out of Colorado Springs. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, John. | |
| Haven't talked to you in a while. | ||
| I will say this man is the master of distraction. | ||
| Now we're talking about naming the Department of War. | ||
| I just wonder, is this some alpha male thing for him and Hags has to this and like the previous caller said about going into Chicago as a veteran, I find it disgusting. | ||
| We should be talking about maybe, I don't know, the economy, homeless people, housing, health care. | ||
| This man's health. | ||
| Look at his ankles. | ||
| Look at how he speaks. | ||
| I know Biden had his issues, but this man is going downhill fast. | ||
| And we really need to think about another president here. | ||
| This guy is scary. | ||
| Have a good day, Jeff. | ||
| That's Darren in Colorado. | ||
| That number for active and former military, 202-748-8003. | ||
| Otherwise, lines as usual, Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Let me come back to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Andy Kessler's column for today, the headline, War Department is a good start. | ||
| He says, let's avoid euphemism and give every agency of government an honest name. | ||
| Why stop with defense? | ||
| Let's tell the truth, he says. | ||
| Some name changes are easy. | ||
| The last administration's social justice department, the Federal Trade Constriction Commission, start with the Commerce Department, better labeled as the Department of Corporate Extortion, he says. | ||
| Treasury should become the dollar printing-like confetti department. | ||
| He goes on to say that the Federal Bureau of Investigation could be known as the Presidential Election Manipulation Organization. | ||
| And the Central Intelligence Agency is clearly the streaming TV plot development writers' room. | ||
| Netflix needs them because we need to compete against the British shows about the MI5 and MI6. | ||
| America first, he says. | ||
| And please, please, please rename Congress the Backbiting Stagnation Club. | ||
| What about the Postal Service? | ||
| Easy, he says, the slow, expensive, obsolete monopoly. | ||
| If we're honestly naming government departments, maybe the public will get behind some real cuts. | ||
| Andy Kessler writes in his column today on the War Department change, calling it a good start. | ||
| This is Steve out of Michigan, Republican. | ||
| Steve, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, morning, John. | |
| I bet you what we should do is maybe call it, maybe the Democrats might like to call it the Department of Weakness or the Department of Gays or the Department of Drag Shows. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That might go over good for them. | |
| You know what, John? | ||
| How about we change C-SPAN Washington Journal to MSNBC SPAN's Democrat Complaint and Hate Line? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That might be a good one. | |
| That's Steve out of Michigan. | ||
| This is Ed out of Florida. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| You know, after World War II, after seeing more than 20 million casualties after ending the war with the dropping of atomic weapons and all of the devastation, Harry Truman did a couple of things, including changing the Department war name to the Department of Defense. | ||
| The presidential seal, which is the Eagle Rising, has the arrows that were in the right talent, the primary, and the olive branches were in the sinister one. | ||
| He switched that to say diplomacy has to be always our first and last approach until war is essential. | ||
| And this is not in that spirit. | ||
| After living through World War II, I think Truman's perspective was a little better than President Trump claiming settling seven wars in six months. | ||
| Not probably as credible in terms of understanding the meanings of these words. | ||
| God bless us all. | ||
| That's Ed in Florida. | ||
| Back to that line for current and former military. | ||
| This is Bill Springfield, Virginia. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for having me on. | |
| I'm a retired colonel, and this is just all show and distraction, as other people have said. | ||
| But what disturbs me the most is we've got a secretary who doesn't seem to understand we actually won the Gulf War and we won in Panama and Grenada. | ||
| You know, he's talking about we've lost everything since the end of World War II. | ||
| This shows some ignorance. | ||
| And then the other problem is that if we ever do go to war, this whole group is just totally incompetent to actually run a war. | ||
| You know, you saw what Trump did during COVID. | ||
| Imagine him doing the same stuff during the war. | ||
| He's just absolutely beyond his depth in managing and leading anything. | ||
| And that's pretty much where we're at with this. | ||
| Bill, how many years? | ||
|
unidentified
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I just think it's a ridiculous waste. | |
| How many years were you in the service? | ||
|
unidentified
|
30. | |
| And were you deployed in that time? | ||
| Where did you serve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I served during the Gulf War, but not in the Gulf. | |
| And I served during Iraqi Freedom, but not in Iraq. | ||
| And did anybody care about the name of the department during your 30 years? | ||
| Do you remember? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nobody cared. | |
| Nobody cared. | ||
| Most countries right now, it's a Ministry of Defense, also, by the way. | ||
| I don't think other than maybe a dictatorship, it's got a Ministry of War. | ||
| We'll take you live now to Capitol Hill, where the House is gabbling in for general speeches today. | ||
| Live coverage of the House is here on C-SPAN. | ||
| The House will be in order. | ||
| The Chair lays before the House a communication from the Speaker. | ||
| The Speaker's Rooms, Washington, D.C., September 8th, 2025. | ||
| I hereby appoint the Honorable Young Kim to act as Speaker Pro Tempore on this day. | ||
| Signed, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives. |