Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Donald Trump fired General CQ Brown as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, ousting the respected Air Force leader as the president seeks to remove military officers who have supported diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Brown was the most senior of six officials removed in a shake-up of the Pentagon’s top ranks that also saw chief of naval operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Air Force vice-chief of staff General James Slife fired along with the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Trump said he would nominate retired Air Force Lt Gen Dan “Razin” Caine to replace Brown, who was the second Black general to serve as the military’s top officer and had begun his four-year term in October 2023.
The president has vowed to rid the military of what he derides as “woke” DEI programmes. The overhaul of the military’s top ranks came as the Pentagon is braced for budget cuts as part of the administration’s sweeping cost-cutting drive.
Speculation over Brown’s future was sparked by Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to be defence secretary. In a November podcast appearance, Hesgeth, a former Fox News host, said: “First of all, you gotta fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
He accused Brown of attempting to implement “woke” policies along with other generals.
In a post on his Truth Social Platform on Friday, Trump wrote: “I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
“He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family.”
Trump’s nomination of Caine to succeed Brown is a break with the convention in which presidents typically select someone for the role who is a service chief or combat commander.
Trump met Caine when he visited Iraq in December 2018, where the officer was the deputy commanding general of the Special Operations Joint Task Force there during the military campaign against the Islamic State.
Caine had recently retired from the military and joined Shield Capital as a venture partner. He had also served as the CIA’s top adviser on military affairs, was an F-16 pilot and a White House fellow, among other assignments.
“Alongside Secretary Pete Hegseth, General Caine and our military will restore peace through strength, put America First, and rebuild our military,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Trump said he also directed Hegseth to solicit nominations “for five additional high-level positions, which will be announced soon”.
Hegseth said he and Trump “are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars”.
With a majority in the Senate, Trump could have wide latitude to replace top officers.
The purge of the Pentagon’s upper echelons was backed by senior Republicans.
Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was “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.”
“President Trump, like every president, deserves to pick military advisers that he knows, trusts and has a relationship with,” Republican senator Lindsey Graham posted on X.
But Jack Reed, the senior Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said he was troubled by the dismissals.
“This appears to be part of a broader, premeditated campaign by President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to purge talented officers for politically charged reasons, which would undermine the professionalism of our military and send a chilling message through the ranks.”
The Pentagon said earlier on Friday that it would fire 5,400 civilian workers beginning next week, the first round in what is expected to be a larger purge of its workforce.
The Trump administration intends to cut the defence department workforce by between 5 per cent and 8 per cent, senior Pentagon official Darin Selnick said. That would amount to potentially tens of thousands of people.