President Trump fired the country’s senior military officer on Friday after weeks of turmoil at the Pentagon, injecting politics into selecting the nation’s top military leader.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q. who became only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job, is to be replaced by a retired three-star Air Force general, Dan Caine, who endeared himself to the president when they met in Iraq six years ago.
“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Mr. Trump said in a message on Truth Social. “General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
Joint Chiefs chairmen traditionally remain in place as administrations change, regardless of the president’s political party. But current White House and Pentagon officials said they wanted to appoint their own top leaders.
The decision to fire General Brown reflects Mr. Trump’s insistence that the military’s leadership is too mired in diversity issues, has lost sight of its role as a combat force to defend the country and is out of step with his “America First” movement.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously said that General Brown should be fired because of his “woke” focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the military.
“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.”
On Mr. Hegseth’s first day at the Pentagon, however, he stood next to General Brown, who became chairman in October 2023, and said he looked forward to working with him.
But it soon became clear that General Brown had not been welcomed into Mr. Trump’s inner circle. He has not been invited to key meetings with the president, officials said.
It was a significant reversal for Mr. Trump from 2020, when General Brown was nominated 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.”
