Lazy Caturday Reads: Donald Trump, Chicken Hawk
Posted: September 6, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: cat art, caturday, Department of War, Donald Trump, Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura, North Korea, Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, Seal Team 6, Venezuela 5 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
NOTE: The images in this post are examples of Monmon cats by contemporary Japanese artist Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura. You can read about him at The Great Cat.
On to today’s reads.
Trump at War
By Kazuaki Horitomo Kitamura
Trump is demanding that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize, while at the same time trying to rebrand the U.S. Department of Defense as the Department of War. He doesn’t have the power to change the name of the DOD or any other Department without the approval of Congress, but he’s doing it anyway.
Jason Breslow at NPR: President Trump signs order to rename the Defense Department as the Department of War.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to give the Department of Defense a new name: the Department of War.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said the rebranding reflected a new tone for the country and its military.
A White House fact sheet explains that under the executive order, the name “Department of War” will serve as a “secondary title” for the Department of Defense.
According to the fact sheet, the order will also authorize Defense Department officials to substitute the word “war” into their titles. For example, the Secretary of Defense could use the title Secretary of War.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge the change in a post on social media on Thursday, writing simply, “DEPARTMENT OF WAR.”
President Trump had previously signaled that a change was in the works. During an appearance in the Oval Office last month, Trump said that War Department “just sounded to me better.”
Trump does not have the authority to change the department’s name without congressional action. The legal name was established by Congress in 1949, when it renamed the newly unified military service branches under a new “Department of Defense” following World War II.
In a statement to NPR, constitutional scholar Steve Vladeck confirmed that, while the president is free to refer to the Pentagon by whatever name he chooses, its “legal name can’t change without Congress.” After signing the order on Friday, Trump indicated that the administration would ask Congress to codify the change into law but also said, “I’m not sure they have to.”
I hate him so much. Why do we have to have a “president” who speaks and behaves like an 8-year-old child?
Erica L. Green at The New York Times: Trump Says U.S. Military Has ‘Never Fought to Win’ Since World War II.
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that ceremonially recognized the Defense Department as the “Department of War,” a name that was dropped after World War II and that the president claimed had caused the country to enter wars it “never fought to win.”
“We won World War II. We won everything before, and as I said, we won everything in between,” Mr. Trump said at an event in the Oval Office, where he signed the order. “And we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn’t fight to win.”
Mr. Trump argued that the name, which was changed by President Harry S. Truman to combine all of branches of the military, had been changed because the country “decided to go woke.”
“I think the Department of War sends a signal,” Mr. Trump said. The change, he argued, was a “much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”
He added: “We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or wokey, and we just fight forever.” [….]
Mr. Trump said that he anticipated pushing to codify the name change into law. He added that in the meantime, “we’re going with it, and we’re going with it very strongly.” The Defense Department, he said, would be moving ahead with the name as a “secondary title,” including by using it on stationery.
This is the same guy who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by claiming to have bone spurs.
This change is going to be annoying and expensive for the military. Politico: Pentagon officials fume over Trump’s Department of War rebrand.
Pentagon officials grappled Friday with the Herculean task of fulfilling President Donald Trump’s executive order to remold the enormous, global agency into the Department of War.
Many expressed frustration, anger and downright confusion at the effort, which could cost billions of dollars for a cosmetic change that would do little to tackle the military’s most pressing challenges — such as countering a more aggressive alliance of authoritarian nations.
The details of the order Trump signed Friday are still vague, but officials may need to change Defense Department seals on more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries and all 50 states. This includes everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to embossed napkins in chow halls, embroidered jackets for Senate-confirmed officials and the keychains and tchotchkes in the Pentagon store.
“This is purely for domestic political audiences,” said a former defense official. “Not only will this cost millions of dollars, it will have absolutely zero impact on Chinese or Russian calculations. Worse, it will be used by our enemies to portray the United States as warmongering and a threat to international stability.” [….]
More on the internal response:
…[T]he seemingly ad hoc rollout of the name change has caused confusion within the building. One Pentagon official, who independently decided to squat on the Department of War LinkedIn page to prevent a foreign adversary or Trump administration critic from taking it over, openly asked on the social network to whom he should hand the page.
The Pentagon rebranded its X account as the “Department of War,” replete with a different seal for the avatar, but the page’s banner still had the old DOD logo. The Pentagon on Friday afternoon redirected users from defense.gov to war.gov, which was temporarily down.
It took the Defense Department weeks to scrub agency websites that contained references to diversity, equity and inclusion after the Trump administration demanded it be removed, said another defense official. Officials are imagining a longer-term headache this time around.
“That was just taking down photos,” the person said. “The seal will have to change and thus anything with it.”
The change is bound to flummox the many universities, nonprofits and contractors that rely on the Defense Department for funding — and potentially pose a huge messaging challenge.
“On a tactical level, it would mean having to rebrand a mountain of contracting, marketing, business development materials, you name it, both digital and otherwise, that specifically cite the Department of Defense or DOD,” said a defense industry consultant.
“More strategically, even philosophically, it could raise new questions about what it means to be supporting the Department of War, which likely sends a more belligerent message to our allies and adversaries alike.”
The whole thing is o childish. But so are Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.
Meanwhile Trump is acting pretty warlike toward Venezuela. First he blew up a speedboat with a drone strike and killed everyone onboard, while offering no evidence the boat was carrying either drugs or gang members. Now he’s talking about target people inside Venezuela. CNN: Trump weighs strikes targeting cartels inside Venezuela, part of wider pressure campaign on Maduro, sources say.
President Donald Trump is weighing a multitude of options for carrying out military strikes against drug cartels operating in Venezuela, including potentially hitting targets inside the country as part of a broader strategy aimed at weakening leader Nicolas Maduro, according to multiple sources briefed on the administration’s plans.
Tuesday’s deadly strike on an alleged drug boat departing Venezuela was a direct reflection of those options, sources said, and marked a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against drug cartels, many of which it’s designated as terrorist groups. Multiple sources told CNN Tuesday’s strike was just the beginning of a much larger effort to rid the region of narcotics trafficking and potentially dislodge Maduro from power.
Asked by a reporter on Friday if he would like to see regime change in Venezuela, Trump said, “We’re not talking about that.”
“But we are talking about the fact that [Venezuela] had an election, which was a very strange election, to put it mildly,” Trump said, referring to last year’s presidential race in Venezuela marred by accusations of electoral fraud.
The US has moved substantial military firepower into the Caribbean in recent weeks, a move meant in part to be a signal to Maduro, according to multiple White House officials.
Eric Schmitt at The New York Times (gift article): What to Know About a Rapid U.S. Military Buildup in the Caribbean.
The rapid U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean Sea culminated this week with a deadly strike against a drug vessel that the Trump administration said had departed from Venezuela.
U.S. officials said the attack on a speedboat on Tuesday killed 11 drug traffickers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both said the military would carry out more strikes in the coming weeks as part of a counternarcotics and counterterrorism campaign.
But on Thursday, two armed Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets buzzed a Navy guided-missile destroyer in the region in a show of force, dialing up tensions between Washington and the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.
In response, the Pentagon dispatched 10 F-35 stealth fighters to Puerto Rico on Friday to deter more Venezuelan flyovers and to be positioned should Mr. Trump order airstrikes against targets in Venezuela itself.
President Trump signed a still-secret directive in July ordering the Pentagon to use military force against some Latin American drug cartels that his administration has labeled “terrorist” organizations.
Around the same time, the administration declared that a Venezuelan criminal group was a terrorist organization and that Mr. Maduro was its leader.
Soon after, the Pentagon began amassing a small armada of ships and planes to monitor the supposed drug traffickers and to pick targets to attack.
The U.S. Navy has long intercepted and boarded ships suspected of smuggling drugs in international waters, typically assigning a Coast Guard officer temporarily in charge to invoke law enforcement authority. Tuesday’s direct attack in the Caribbean was a marked departure from that decades-long approach.
No kidding. It very likely was a war crime. Use the gift link to read the whole article.
More warlike talk from Trump, according to Danai Nesta Kupemba at BBC News: Trump says Venezuelan jets will be shot down if they endanger US ships.
Donald Trump has warned that, if Venezuelan jets fly over US naval ships and “put us in a dangerous position, they’ll be shot down”.
The president’s warning comes after Venezuela flew military aircraft near a US vessel off South America for the second time in two days, US officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News….
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said that the US allegations about his country are not true, and that differences between the nations do not justify a “military conflict”.
“Venezuela has always been willing to talk, to engage in dialogue, but we demand respect,” he added.
When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Friday what would happen if Venezuelan jets flew over US vessels again, Trump said Venezuela would be in “trouble”.
Trump told his general, standing beside him, that he could do anything he wanted if the situation escalated.
Since his return to office in January, Trump has steadily intensified his anti-drug-trafficking efforts in Latin America.
Maduro has accused the US of seeking “regime change through military threat”.
We also learned yesterday that Trump authorized a dangerous failed mission in North Korea during his first term and didn’t notify Congress. Dave Philipps and How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart.
A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink-black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right.
The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump.
The mission had the potential to provide the United States with a stream of valuable intelligence. But it meant putting American commandos on North Korean soil — a move that, if detected, not only could sink negotiations but also could lead to a hostage crisis or an escalating conflict with a nuclear-armed foe.
It was so risky that it required the president’s direct approval.
For the operation, the military chose SEAL Team 6’s Red Squadron — the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden. The SEALs rehearsed for months, aware that every move needed to be perfect. But when they reached what they thought was a deserted shore that night, wearing black wet suits and night-vision goggles, the mission swiftly unraveled.
A North Korean boat appeared out of the dark. Flashlights from the bow swept over the water. Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire. Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead.
The SEALs retreated into the sea without planting the listening device.
The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged, or even hinted at, by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and are being reported here for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law.
I’d love to know who talked to the NYT about this. The author claims to have have 2 dozen sources:
This account is based on interviews with two dozen people, including civilian government officials, members of the first Trump administration and current and former military personnel with knowledge of the mission. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the mission’s classified status.
Several of those people said they were discussing details about the mission because they were concerned that Special Operations failures are often hidden by government secrecy. If the public and policymakers become aware only of high-profile successes, such as the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan, they may underestimate the extreme risks that American forces undertake.
The military operation on North Korean soil, close to American military bases in South Korea and the Pacific region, also risked setting off a broader conflict with a hostile, nuclear-armed and highly militarized adversary.
Use the gift link to read the whole thing.
According to ABC News, Trump claims he knows nothing about the Seal Team 6 debacle: Trump says he doesn’t know ‘anything’ about reported violent, failed SEAL Team 6 mission in North Korea.
President Donald Trump said Friday he didn’t know “anything” about what the New York Times reported was a classified 2019 SEAL Team 6 mission in North Korea in which unarmed North Korean civilians were killed during an aborted operation.
The Pentagon and U.S. Special Operations Command declined to comment to ABC News about The New York Times report.
Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump was asked by a reporter: “Can you confirm that it happened?”
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m hearing it now for the first time,” he responded.
The account, citing “two dozen people, including civilian government officials, members of the first Trump administration and current and former military personnel with knowledge of the mission” who spoke to the Times anonymously, said Trump had approved the mission.
Either Trump is lying or the memory is lost to dementia.
This story by Paul McCleary and Daniel Lippman suggests that Trump is more focused on attacking Americans and nearby allies than foreign enemies: Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat.
Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China.
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.
“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”
The report usually comes out at the start of each administration, and Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring. The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.
A U.S. military strike this week allegedly killed 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in international waters, a major step in using the military to kill noncombatants.
The Pentagon also has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians, a job normally reserved for law enforcement.
The authors note that this doesn’t seem to reflect Trump’s rhetoric.
The shift “doesn’t seem aligned with President Trump’s hawkish views on China at all,” said a Republican foreign policy expert briefed on the report, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
The president has continued to express tough rhetoric toward China, including imposing staggering tariffs on Beijing and accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of “conspiring against” the U.S. after he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade in the country’s capital.
Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, is leading the strategy. He played a key role in writing the 2018 version during Trump’s first term and has been a staunch supporter of a more isolationist American policy. Despite his long track record as a China hawk, Colby aligns with Vice President JD Vance on the desire to disentangle the U.S. from foreign commitments.
That’s interesting. I wonder if this is coming more from the Project 2025 group than Trump himself.
A few more stories to check out:
Politico: Trump seeking ways to take over 9/11 memorial in NYC.
The Guardian: Kennedy Center ticket sales take a nosedive after Trump takeover.
Ann Applebaum at The Atlantic (gift link): America Surrenders in the Global Information Wars.
Jonathan J. Cooper at AP: How Donald Trump is weaponizing the government in his second term to settle personal scores.
Ariana Baio at The Independent: ‘Chipocalypse Now’: Trump threatens Chicago with ‘Department of War’ and suggests ICE raids imminent.
Those are my offerings for today. What’s on your mind?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Miami Herald: Miami Herald, New York Times seek to unseal records on Jeffrey Epstein’s estate.
The Miami Herald has joined an effort by The New York Times asking a judge to unseal financial records from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The records — written by a court-designated special master overseeing probate of his estate — could reveal how his co-executors are distributing the sex trafficker’s fortune and, more significantly, provide insight into how Epstein acquired his money, which has long been a mystery. Epstein’s primary residence was Little St. James, his private island off St. Thomas and where for years he operated a group of shell companies that enabled him to obtain over $300 million in tax breaks in the USVI.
A special master generally provides the court with reports that summarize the assets, liabilities, expenditures and income of the estate in order to ensure that it meets its obligations.
Lawyers for the media companies argue that the reports should not be sealed and are a matter of public record under the First Amendment. Case law has established that there is a “presumption of openness” to judicial documents under the First Amendment unless parties to the case are able to convince a judge the documents should be sealed. The New York Times filed its letter July 30, urging the judge overseeing the estate to unseal the reports, saying they were designated as confidential without any justification for the sealing. The Herald filed a letter to the judge on Thursday.
Politico: Fellow Kennedys call on RFK Jr. to resign as health secretary.
Prominent members of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s family called on him Friday to resign from his post atop the Department of Health and Human Services.
The calls from relatives came a day after the health secretary faced tough questions from Republican and Democratic senators about his overhaul of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at a Senate hearing.
Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III released a statement calling his uncle “a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American.” He accused the secretary of choosing “to dismiss science” and “sow confusion” during his congressional testimony.
“The challenge before us—from disease outbreaks to mental health crises—demand moral clarity, scientific expertise, and leadership rooted in fact,” he wrote. “Those values are not present in the Secretary’s office. He must resign.”
BB, what a post. That news about North Korea. Fucking hell!
The cart art is amazing! So colorful!
Trump can’t be trusted with the Nation’s military and Congress needs to do their jobs! The goals of war can be more strategic than just imperialism and fascism conquering countries for some idiot.
I really wish he’d die.