President Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs on Friday, dismissing the nation's top military officer whom he and aides have derided as focused on diversity issues. Air Force Gen. CQ Brown will be replaced by a retired three-star general, the New York Times reports. Brown is a history-making fighter pilot and widely respected officer, per the AP, who became only the second Black chairman. Trump posted on social media that he's chosen Lt. Gen. Dan Caine for the position. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then announced more dismissals, per the Washington Post, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to be chief of naval operations, and Gen. James Slife, a top Air Force officer.
"General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a 'warfighter' with significant interagency and special operations experience," Trump wrote. Joint Chiefs chairmen usually are not changed with presidential administrations, per the Times, but Trump's aides at the White House and Pentagon have said they wanted to install their own team. Trump has said the military has strayed from its priority as a defense force and is out of sync with his "America First" goals. In his announcement Friday, the defense secretary said, "Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars."
Hegseth had called for dismissing Brown before. "You gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs," he said on a podcast in November, suggesting Brown might have been picked for the position because he's Black, per the AP. "Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We'll never know, but always doubt," Hegseth said. Caine's official biography says he's a career F-16 pilot who served on active duty and in the National Guard, while most recently being associate director for military affairs at the CIA. (More President Trump stories.)
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