Trump’s Military Purge: Politics and Leadership in the Pentagon

In an extraordinary move, President Trump fired the country’s senior military officer, marking a significant purge at the Pentagon. This action injected politics into the selection of the nation’s top military leaders, sparking widespread debate and concern.

On a Friday night, six Pentagon officials were dismissed, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy; Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force; and the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. This decision was part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to assert control over the military leadership, with a focus on aligning the military with the president’s “America First” movement.

The decision to fire General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was announced by Trump in a message on Truth Social. The president criticized the military’s leadership for being too focused on diversity issues and losing sight of its primary role as a combat force. This move reflects a broader dissatisfaction within the Trump administration regarding the military’s priorities and its adherence to the president’s agenda.

Traditionally, Joint Chiefs chairmen remain in place as administrations change, regardless of the president’s political party. However, current White House and Pentagon officials have indicated a desire to appoint their own top leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a statement, thanked Admiral Franchetti and General Slife for their service and requested nominations for their replacements.

Hegseth did not specify why he was firing the judge advocates general. However, during his Senate confirmation hearing last month, he criticized military lawyers for placing unnecessary legal restrictions on soldiers in battle. He stated, “They put their own priorities in front of the war fighters, their promotions, their medals, in front of having the backs of those making the tough calls on the front lines.” This sentiment aligns with Trump’s broader critique of the military’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Mr. Hegseth said in an appearance on the “Shawn Ryan Show” in November. He added that any general involved with D.E.I. efforts should be fired. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it,” he said. “That’s the only litmus test we care about.”

Pete Hegseth

On his first day at the Pentagon, Hegseth stood next to General Brown, who became chairman in October 2023, and said he looked forward to working with him. However, it soon became clear that General Brown had not been welcomed into Trump’s inner circle. He has not been invited to key meetings with the president, officials said.

This marks a significant reversal for Trump, who in 2020 nominated General Brown to be the Air Force’s chief of staff. At the time, the president noted the historic significance of his decision to appoint the “first-ever African American military service chief,” writing on social media that the general was “a Patriot and Great Leader.”

General Brown had repeatedly told aides that he would not resign. On Friday, he was in El Paso, reviewing the military’s latest mission of helping to carry out Trump’s immigration directives. Trump did not specify why he was firing General Brown, writing, “He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family.”

General Brown found out he was being removed when Hegseth telephoned him at his hotel in El Paso on Friday evening, a military official said. General Caine retired with three stars, as a lieutenant general. By statute, anyone picked to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is supposed to have served as a combatant commander, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or as the top uniformed officer of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Space Force.

It was unclear whether General Caine would need a congressional waiver; a congressional aide said the president had some latitude to choose whom he wanted and that exceptions could be made for national security reasons. Regardless of whether he requires one, he will need to be confirmed by the Senate.

In his message on Truth Social, Trump said he was honored to be nominating “Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” calling him “an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”

In recent years, Trump has publicly lauded General Caine for telling him that the Islamic State could be defeated far more quickly than his advisers had suggested. The details of the story, which could not be independently verified, have shifted over time. In one version, Trump said the general claimed it would take a week to defeat the group; in another, he said four weeks.

Trump has also claimed that General Caine, during their meeting in Iraq in December 2018, donned a “Make America Great Again” hat, in defiance of military guidelines that active-duty troops should not wear political paraphernalia. General Caine has told aides that he has never worn a MAGA hat.

In his post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump again praised General Caine’s counterterrorism skills. He said, “During my first term, Razin was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate. It was done in record setting time, a matter of weeks. Many so-called military ‘geniuses’ said it would take years to defeat ISIS. General Caine, on the other hand, said it could be done quickly, and he delivered.”

In fact, by December 2018, when Trump visited General Caine in Iraq, other senior U.S. officials were saying that the final defeat of the last remnants of the Islamic State was only months away, although rebuilding Iraq would probably take years.

Trump has fixated on the position of the Joint Chiefs chairman since 2019, when he picked Gen. Mark A. Milley, General Brown’s predecessor, a decision the president came to bitterly regret. Trump has complained in particular about General Milley’s calls to his Chinese counterpart during the waning weeks of the president’s first term. In a post on social media, Trump called the act “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Having a loyalist as his top military adviser is now paramount to Trump, aides say. The dismissal of General Brown comes amid growing tumult at the Pentagon, the largest federal agency with three million employees, including 1.3 million service members. Hegseth has ordered senior military and Defense Department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 percent from the military budget over each of the next five years, officials said on Wednesday.

In a memo issued on Tuesday, Hegseth said a number of branches in the military and the Pentagon should turn in budget-cutting proposals by Monday, two officials said. The memo listed 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border.

The decision to replace General Brown with General Caine was made over the past two weeks and was tightly held within a small group of senior administration officials, according to two people with knowledge of the deliberations. While Hegseth was in Europe last week, General Caine met with Vice President JD Vance and then with Trump. Hegseth and General Caine spoke several times, and Hegseth advocated his appointment, one of the people said.

While reports of lists of senior generals and admirals targeted for dismissal have circulated on Capitol Hill for weeks, administration officials said most senior House and Senate leaders were not consulted before Trump’s decision to relieve General Brown.

In a statement on Friday night, Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee — the panel that approves all military nominations — praised General Brown, but made no mention of General Caine, who has not yet been officially nominated. “I thank Chairman Brown for his decades of honorable service to our nation,” Mr. Wicker said in a statement. “I am confident Secretary Hegseth and President Trump will select a qualified and capable successor for the critical position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was sharply critical of the move. “Firing uniformed leaders as a type of political loyalty test, or for reasons relating to diversity and gender that have nothing to do with performance, erodes the trust and professionalism that our service members require to achieve their missions,” he said in a statement.

Even some of Hegseth’s staunchest supporters in Congress have warned that a purge in the senior ranks of the Pentagon could cause morale to plunge. “There’s been a lot of talk about firing ‘woke’ generals,” Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, said last month at Hegseth’s Senate confirmation hearing. “I would say give those men and women a chance under new leadership.”

Most recent Joint Chiefs chairmen have served four years, with a president nominating a successor months before the incumbent chairman steps down. In his first term, Trump hinted in late 2018 that General Milley would be his choice to succeed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. nearly a year before General Dunford’s term ended.

Because General Caine is retired, he would have to be called back to active duty for the Senate to hold hearings on his nomination. Only one retired officer has been called back from retirement to serve as chairman: Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy.

It was unclear whether General Brown would remain chairman until his successor was confirmed by the Senate, or whether Adm. Christopher W. Grady, the vice chairman, would serve as the acting chairman. Trump has now fired four four-star officers in the past month. Within 24 hours of his second inauguration, the president fired Adm. Linda L. Fagan, the first female officer to serve as the commandant of the Coast Guard.