President Donald Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, ending months of speculation about the top military officer’s job security.
Trump announced his decision in a post on Truth Social.
To replace Brown, Trump tapped retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine.
In his Truth Social post, Trump described Caine as “an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
Trump credited Caine with being “instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate” during his first term in office.
In a statement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was also “requesting nominations” for the positions of chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff, thanking outgoing Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Gen. James Slife for their service.
“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 said.
The changes came after a bipartisan group of members of the House Armed Services Committee wrote a letter to Hegseth, pressing him to be transparent about the criteria and process used to evaluate officers in line to be replaced.
Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, issued a statement Friday thanking Brown for his decades of honorable service.
“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,” Wicker said.
In his own statement, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the panel’s ranking member, said he was troubled by the nature of the dismissals, which included the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
“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,” Reed said.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, accused the president of unleashing “even more chaos” with his latest “Friday Night massacre.”
“All of this continues to play into the hands of Vladimir Putin and others working to exploit the weakness Trump continues to broadcast and undermine the military, our government, our national security interests, and democracy worldwide,” Smith said in a Friday statement.
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