Among the many quirks of Donald Trump, his love of changing the names of existing days and departments is a key one. After becoming U.S. President for the second time, Trump changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and also justified his choice quite strongly. Now, on Tuesday, he talked about changing the name of Veterans Day while attending a ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery.
Trump said, “As you know, today is not only Veterans Day, but it’s my proclamation that we are now going to be saying and calling Victory Day for World War I. I saw France was celebrating another Victory Day for World War II, and other countries were celebrating. They were all celebrating. We’re the one that won the wars.”
It should be noted here that this is not the first time that Trump has spoken about changing the name of Victory Day. Back on May 1, he talked about the same on a Truth Social post. Trump posted, “I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I. We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything.”
He continued, “I watched it. I watched UK. I watched Russia. They were celebrating Victory Day World War II, and I said ‘we got to have a Victory Day.’ Nobody even talked about it in our country. From now on we’re going to be celebrating Victory Day for World War I, for World War II and frankly for everything else.”
May 8 marks Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) as that is the day when Nazi Germany surrendered and Europe witnessed the end of World War II. Russia observes Victory Day on May 9, and it is an annual holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Germany in World War II.
As reported by the Daily Beast, “European countries mark the end of World War I with Armistice Day of November 11. The date is marked in the U.S. with Veterans Day and by Commonwealth countries as Remembrance Day.”
On Tuesday, Trump also mentioned that while America has won several other wars, they would start with renaming the days focusing on the World Wars. The President said, “And we could do for plenty of other wars, but we’ll start with those two. Maybe some day somebody else will add a couple more because we won a lot of good ones.”
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Trump’s obsession with changing the name of Victory Day aligns with his decision to change the name of the Department of Defense. Talking about that, Trump said on Tuesday, “Remember we won World War I, we won World War 2, we won everything in between. We won everything that came before. And then we brilliantly decided to change the name of this great, this great thing that we all created together, and we became politically correct. We don’t like being politically correct.”
While war and defense are not exactly synonymous, the President has his own reasons to justify his choices. Moreover, during a time when ICE agents are harassing veterans and detaining them without valid proof of anything wrong, Trump’s obsession with glorifying the wars American veterans fought and won does not match with the kind of treatment his administration is subjecting them to.
