Who is Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., whom President Donald Trump fired Friday from his post as America’s most senior uniformed military officer? Ask Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. But be deliberate about which Pete Hegseth you query.
- Hegseth the Defense Secretary, in a statement released by the Pentagon, praised Brown’s “honorable service” and added a personal flourish: “I have come to know him as a thoughtful adviser.”
Hegseth the Abrasive Fox News Personality, in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” assailed Brown for his support of racial diversity in the military and even seemed to suggest Brown (who is Black) owed his rise to racial preferences.
- “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt – which on its face seems unfair to CQ,” Hegseth wrote. “But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it really doesn’t much matter.”
DECISION POINTS: What to Look for as Hegseth Demands Cuts
Hegseth also fired the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force – judge advocates general – which alarmed experts on the military.
Trump on Caine
Trump’s sporadic past remarks about the new chairman of the joint chiefs, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, hint at another potential reason for his elevation: a belief by the president that he’s found someone so loyal he may even disregard military rules in support of the reality show star turned commander in chief.
On at least two occasions, Trump has told a story about meeting Caine in Iraq. (Reporters have learned to be especially skeptical of what some call “‘sir’ stories.” But what’s important here is what the president believes, or wants others to believe, about the general and their relationship.)
According to the story, Caine in 2018 told Trump the Islamic State group could be defeated in a matter of weeks with the right permission from Washington. Trump said the general also was among a coterie of military officials who greeted the president on a visit that resembled a pep rally, with one of those officials pledging he’d “kill” for Trump and donning a Make America Great Again hat.
In Trump’s telling last year during remarks at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, “hundreds of troops” also put on MAGA hats. (Caine reportedly has said he’s never done so and been endorsed as apolitical by a military colleague.)
- “I walked down, and this is where I met Gen. (‘Razin’) Caine. ‘And what’s your name, general? What’s your name?’ And he gave me his name. ‘What’s your name, sergeant?’ ‘Yes, sir. I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.’ Then he puts on a Make America Great Again hat. You’re not allowed to do that, but they did it.”
The military bans active-duty members from participating in partisan political activity, and troops holding MAGA hats did cause a stir when Trump visited Iraq in December 2018. But Trump, to put it mildly, is an unreliable narrator.
What This Tells Us
The firings fit a pattern of Trump disrupting Washington by overturning norms and traditions, trying to take control of traditionally independent agencies, and appointing loyalists to key posts – and not just in the way that every president wants to install people he can trust.
Past presidents have fired generals in splashy ways. Barack Obama, known to clash on Afghanistan policy with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, pushed him out after Rolling Stone published a piece in which McChrystal aides disparaged top civilians in the Obama administration, up to and including Vice President Joe Biden and Obama himself.
U.S. law specifies that the president can nominate someone to be chairman of the joint chiefs “only if” they have served as vice chairman, led one of the services (think chief of naval operations or chief of space operations), or helmed a major combatant command. None of those apply to Caine. The president can waive those requirements if “necessary in the national interest.”
- “This is a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take,” Hegseth said on “Fox News Sunday” about Brown’s removal.
