That didn't take long. Roughly twelve hours or so after the last polling places closed, the Trump-ordered military operation on our southern border is getting a significant rhetorical downsizing. Apparently it no longer deserves its own operational name.
Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Jamie Davis told CNN, "we are not calling it 'Operation Faithful Patriot,' we are calling it 'border support.'"
Davis said he could not provide a reason why the change had been made.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the change was made yesterday (as in, during the elections) by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's office. The name Operation Faithful Patriot is out; a no-named "border support" deployment is in.
The move provides (cough) some fodder to those who suspected the entire deployment was intended only as election-eve political stunt. Apparently the operation only deserved its extremely gaudy and not-at-all-nationalist-baiting name until the exact day the polls closed, at which point Mattis's team decided to downplay the previously hyped effort as not nearly the effort it had previously been advertised as. Okay. Sure.
The next question is whether the whole thing gets either severely downsized or called off. We'll see!