Friday night purge as Trump fires top general and five senior military staff
Washington: President Donald Trump sacked the country’s top general and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth fired five senior US military personnel in an unprecedented Friday night purge at the Pentagon.
Trump removed four-star general Charles “CQ” Brown Jr as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the US and a direct adviser to the president and secretary of defence, and said he would nominate Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine as his replacement.
Dismissed in a purge: US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr.Credit: AP
Meanwhile, Hegseth sacked the chief of naval operations and the second-in-command of the Air Force, thanking them for their service and opening nominations for their replacements. He also announced he was removing the judge advocates general for each unit – army, navy and air force – who oversee the military justice system.
The moves were widely described as a sweeping and extraordinary intervention that would shock the Pentagon, and upends tradition of the joint chiefs chair continuing to serve a new administration.
It comes amid a broader purge of the Department of Defence, with the acting undersecretary, Darin Selnick, announcing 5400 probationary employees would be dismissed from next week. The department’s civilian workforce would eventually be reduced by 5 to 8 per cent in line with the president’s priorities, he said.
Donald Trump has nominated Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.Credit: AP
In a post on TruthSocial, Trump praised Caine as “an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience”, who had been “passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden”.
Hegseth also lauded Caine as someone who “embodies the warfighter ethos and is exactly the leader we need to meet the moment”.
Brown was only the second black man to serve as chairman of the joint chiefs, and Hegseth had previously queried whether Brown got the job because of his race, and criticised him for supporting diversity initiatives.
“Was it because of his skin colour? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt – which on its face seems unfair,” Hegseth wrote in a book. “But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter.”
On a podcast in November, Hegseth explicitly said Brown should be fired and added: “Any general who was involved … in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go.”
Since his return to the Oval Office, Trump has made dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the federal government a top priority, and has embarked on an unprecedented purge of senior bureaucrats, institutions and programs.
In a post on X, Democratic congressman Jason Crow said the purge of senior Pentagon officials was “deeply troubling” but purging the judge advocates general worried him the most.
“JAG officers interpret law for our commanders. They help determine what’s lawful and constitutional,” Crow said.
“Replacing these military lawyers with Trump loyalists is so dangerous.”
In a post on X, one-time Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci went much further and suggested the removal of the country’s top general could be a precursor to Trump attempting to defy the Constitution to remain in power after 2028.
“He just fired the Joint Chief of Staff. Wants to install a puppet. For those who think that he is contemplating leaving, they don’t understand what happened on January 6,” Scaramucci posted, referring to the 2021 riots in which Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
Adam Smith, a congressman from Washington state who is the Democrats’ leader of the House Armed Services Committee, called the moves a “Friday night massacre” that had unleashed even more chaos.
“CQ Brown is a true patriot,” he said. “He is intelligent, accomplished and well respected on both sides of the aisle and made history with his decades of exceptional service to our country. That wasn’t good enough for the president, who has chosen – yet again – fealty over proven ability to do the job and loyalty to the Constitution.
“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.”
With AP
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