The NPR Politics Podcast
Trump Administration Fires Top Pentagon Officials, Military Lawyers
Mon, 24 Feb 2025
Over the weekend, the Trump administration fired several high-ranking military leaders and announced it plans to fire over 5,000 probationary Pentagon employees starting this week. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Why has the Trump Administration Fired Top Pentagon Officials?
And over the weekend, the Trump administration fired several high-ranking military leaders, as well as announced that it plans to fire over 5,000 probationary Pentagon employees starting this week. Tom, there's a lot to talk about, but let's start at the top. President Trump announced on social media that he was going to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man by the name of C.Q.
Chapter 2: Who is C.Q. Brown and Why is His Firing Significant?
Brown Jr. Why is this job so important, and how big of a deal is it that he's been fired?
It's a very big deal. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the top military advisor to the president. They usually stay in office four years. He was in there for about 16 months. They also fired the top Navy officer, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to hold a job. And they threw over the side the number two Air Force officer, General Jim Slife. This is unprecedented.
When you say unprecedented, explain this to me, because even as a sort of news consumer of Pentagon News, he's not the first president to fire or hire a general because of a personal disagreement or a personal preference.
Chapter 3: Is There a Precedent for Firing Military Leaders Without Cause?
Well, no, the important word here is cause. Why are you being relieved? None of these people, not one of them was given a cause why they've been relieved. The thread with all of them is. is the perception of they got the jobs because of race or gender or because this sense of woke.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, wrote in his book, The War on Warriors, that came out, I think, last year, that basically he questioned whether C.Q. Brown, African-American, got the job because of his race or because of his skill. He's an F-16 pilot with, you know, more than a thousand hours in the cockpit. And then Lisa Franchetti, he also questioned her.
Did she get it because of her gender? And finally, the number two Air Force officer, General Jim Slife, after the George Floyd murder, he basically said, listen, you know, We may have a problem with institutional racism in the Air Force. We have to deal with it head on. That's the thread with all of them.
And C.Q. Brown had a video that, you know, was very impassioned about his experience as an African-American.
Exactly right. A very emotional video after George Floyd was killed. He talked about the discrimination he felt rising up the ranks of the Air Force. And again, Hegseth in his book said C.Q. Brown with that was playing the race card.
We should note, though, that Trump had appointed C.Q. Brown to the Pentagon in his first administration. And even in announcing his firing, he wasn't as personally pejorative towards him as he has been towards other people. It didn't seem as personal as other Trump firings have been.
Well, he nominated him to be the chief of staff of the Air Force and was effusive about him back at that time.
Tom, the man that Donald Trump says he's going to replace him with is a guy by the name of Dan Cain. What can you tell us about him?
He is a lieutenant general, spent a lot of his time in the special operations community and also at the CIA. People I talk with that have known him for years say he's very well regarded. He's a great officer. The problem is he's never held a combatant command like, you know, Central Command, which covers the Middle East or Southern Command for Central and South America.
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Chapter 4: Who is Dan Cain and What Challenges Does He Face?
Domenico Cain is someone who will need to be confirmed by the Senate, but I think we have seen play out that the Senate is not particularly interested in throwing up any roadblocks for people that Donald Trump wants in his administration. So he seems like he's probably in a pretty good position to get the job.
Yeah, and you would know this better than us with covering Congress. But, yeah, I mean, this is what we've basically seen, that Republicans have essentially said that they are going to approve – Nearly everybody who Trump has put forward, in fact, they've approved everybody.
The one person who wound up not, you know, going forward was Matt Gaetz for attorney general, but he withdrew beforehand seeing the writing on the wall. But yeah, I mean, even if there's a couple of Republicans who say that they don't want to vote for someone, they're still able to get 51 votes for a lot of them.
And that's actually one of the things that I thought was really fascinating during the last presidential administration with Biden and how many Democrats complained about having Joe Manchin in there and how he was taking out Biden's agenda and making it not progressive enough. And it's exactly things like this, though, that are reasons why you would want to have another
person in there on your side because these margins are so narrow.
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Chapter 5: Will the Senate Confirm Trump's Pentagon Picks?
I mean, Domenico, Trump, I think, is enjoying a bit of a honeymoon in his second term. He has a ton of support within the party. But don't you see some element of political risk here in that the Trump administration is just upending the Pentagon, the national security apparatus, and these are potentially politically risky moves?
Well, the real risk is going to come or the real political consequences will come when There's an actual crisis and it's not handled well. It's not that you can't find majorities of people who say that they don't think that there should be preferential hiring, for example. But I understand the military – you can find polls that will show military members or veterans being in favor of Trump.
But some 40 percent or more of the military is non-white. And I think that this eventually will run into itself when you have enough people who feel like they're outside of the norm of what is acceptable within society and within the military.
And one thing to point out here, Susan, is that what effect will this have on recruiting? Yeah. Is that a good job for me? You know, or African-Americans. Right. If they're treating people this way and saying, oh, you just got the job because of race. Why would I want to join that organization if they're already basically saying, you know, you're not up to standard?
All right. Let's take a quick break and we're going to talk more about these firings when we get back. And we're back. And Defense Secretary Hegseth this weekend also fired three judge advocates. These are people often referred to as JAGs for the Army, Navy and Air Force. These are essentially military lawyers who make sure the U.S. is complying with military law.
And Tom Hegseth in the past and even in the present has made clear he doesn't hold these folks in very high regard.
No, that's right. I mean, he considers them roadblocks. And he said that in his confirmation hearing, they're tying the hands of warfighters. And of course, there is a concern. You know, it's funny because everyone was focused on C.Q. Brown and also Lisa Franchetti, the top officer in the Navy. We were all focused on that, me and others. We miss the Jags.
And people called me after the story came out about C.Q. Brown and Franchetti and said, Tom, Look at the lawyers. Look what they're doing. And what they're looking for apparently is more compliant lawyers, right? So we could have problems with – let's say they want to use active duty troops on American streets, which previous defense secretary said is not a good idea.
It violates the Posse Comitatus Act after the Civil War. which basically says active duty troops should have no policing role on American cities. And finally, I was talking with Frank Kendall, who is Air Force Secretary under Joe Biden. And he said one of his concerns is, let's say you're doing a bombing run in Yemen or Iraq or Syria. They're very, very careful not to have any civilian casualties.
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