On Friday, Donald Trump fired Chairman of the Joint Chief's of Staff CQ Brown, along with several other top Pentagon officials. Now, Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, has a question for the man tapped to succeed him, Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Caine.Quote — "will he have the ability to speak truth to power?" Senator Reed is the top democrat on the Armed Services Committee. The Trump administration says it wants a military built on meritocracy. Critics say it's building one governed by political loyalty.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who is Pete Hegseth and what were his views on military leadership?
Before he was even tapped by President Trump to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth laid out how he thought the incoming administration should overhaul the armed forces.
There's a chance to course correct it, but it would take the new Trump administration going after it really hard.
This was on the Sean Ryan Show podcast. And at the top of Hegseth's list?
Well, first of all, you've got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
That would be General C.Q. Brown, who was the nation's highest-ranking military officer until Friday night when he was fired. Hegseth had attacked Brown for promoting diversity initiatives in the armed services. In his book, War on Warriors, he questioned whether General Brown got the job because he was black.
On Fox News, over the weekend, Secretary Hegseth said he has, quote, a lot of respect for Brown, but that Trump had the right to dismiss him.
There is civilian control of the military. Nothing about this is unprecedented. The president deserves to pick his key national security and military advisory team.
Other presidents have fired high-ranking generals, though none has fired a chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They serve four-year terms, often across administrations. And though they do serve at the pleasure of the president, they take an oath to the Constitution. Some Democrats say Trump's move undermines that.
I want everyone in DOD to be holding to the president, not to the Constitution.
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Chapter 2: Why was General C.Q. Brown fired by Trump?
There isn't much there to actually remove. There's a few hours of training a year. And again, I don't know what they mean by wokeness. I'm not sure what they mean by that at all. The impact of what they've done is to politicize these positions to a degree that I've never seen before. These officers serve apolitically. They are loyal to whoever is in power. They carry out their policies.
And what's been created by doing this is an environment in which career officers suddenly have to worry about their political alignment.
And just to stay with the questions about wokeness, I hear you saying you don't even understand what that means. I think the Trump administration would argue that means diversity initiatives have been pursued at the expense of performance. In your long experience at the Pentagon, did you see that?
No, absolutely not. We did pay attention to disparities in the Department of the Air Force. We had some studies that were done under the previous Trump administration that showed significant disparities. But we never lowered any of our standards about moving people into positions or promoting them or anything else that was competitively selected.
Do you know General Cain, President Trump's pick for chairman? Is he qualified?
I do. I have no reason to say that he's not qualified, except for the fact that he does not have the experience that is normally associated with that job. Normally, and by law, a person who goes into the chairman's job...
chairman of the Joint Chiefs, should have served as a four-star general in another major command, either as a head of one of the military services or as a head of one of the major component commands around the world. General Kane has not done that.
I also want to ask about the removal of some of the Defense Department's top military lawyers in this purge. This is not generating headlines as big as removing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Why is it worth paying attention to?
I find that more troubling in a way than removing the other individuals that have been removed.
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