A member of the national guard looks on while standing guard during the No Kings protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 14, 2025. REUTERS_Daniel Cole

MSNBC national security analyst John Brennan called President Donald Trump’s recent maneuvers to parade troops through US cities and the renaming of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War” as the flexing of personal imaginary strength.

“This sort of faux alpha male strongman image and marketing that Donald Trump is involved in really just sends a wrong signal — speaking to the ‘Department of War’ particularly — with things that have been going on recently we don't want to send a signal to our friends and allies around the globe that we are committed to a very aggressive posture, and we're going to be engaging in [inane] war.”

Brennen added that the image the U.S. has traditionally presented was one of strength with restraint.

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“We should do everything possible to make sure we keep this country strong and safe and secure and also work closely with our allies and partners around the world,” Brennen said, adding that he resented Trump’s “marketing gimmick” tearing down the nation’s hard-won image.

“Donald Trump has been involved in for so many years these branding efforts to try to show that he is a strong man. It really, hopefully is not going to do anything at all to the ethos, the real ethos of the Department of Defense, which is, again, to serve their country valiantly, nobly and also fully consistent with us laws.”

VoteVets Senior Adviser Max Rose reminded MSNBC that the nation “just had an atrocious jobs report while the president's spending his time giving the Secretary of Defense a new nickname.”

"So now it's the Department of War, and they have service members deployed in cities throughout the United States of America, so who exactly are we at war with?” Rose said. “But there's an underlying cultural and intellectual motivation behind this nickname change and that is this belief that we have not had a respectable military since World War II. This is so disrespectful to every living veteran who they very clearly now think are actually suckers and losers.”

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