A Friday Night Massacre at the Pentagon

President Trump tonight began a purge of the senior ranks of the United States armed forces in an apparent effort to intimidate the military and create an officer corps personally loyal to him. The president fired General C.Q. Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a remarkable move but also one that Trump and his MAGA allies signaled was coming.  

Brown has been the target of criticisms from some Republican senators as well as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, all of whom argued that he was too “woke” and too concerned with diversity in the armed forces. In his book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth suggested that Brown, who is Black, may have risen to his position through racial preferences. “We'll never know,” he wrote, in a classic just-asking-questions dodge.

But Trump should know. He’s the president who nominated Brown to be Air Force Chief of Staff in 2020. (Biden appointed Brown as Chairman in 2023.). Trump gave no reason for the firing and Hegseth issued a boilerplate statement thanking Brown—who is only the second African American, after the late Colin Powell, to hold the position of Chairman—for his distinguished service.

The chairman is the most senior officer in the United States and by law the principal military adviser to the president. He does not direct military forces and is not in the chain of command. Normally, the chairman serves a four-year term; the position, like that of FBI director, is meant to bridge across administrations rather than change with each incoming president—specifically so that the chairman (again, like the head of the FBI)  does not become a partisan political appointment.

Obviously, Trump has no use for such conventions, and believes that every senior official in the United States should be a personal appointee of the president—so long as that president is him. If U.S. military leaders are in any doubt about the necessity of absolute loyalty to Trump, they need only look to Brown’s replacement. Instead of tapping another serving four-star, Trump has reached out to a retired three-star Air Force officer named Dan Caine, whom Trump tonight said was unjustly passed over for his fourth star by “Sleepy Joe Biden” despite being “highly qualified and respected.”

Trump apparently met Caine on a trip to Iraq in 2018. The president later recalled that first meeting during remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2019. He claimed that Caine—call sign “Razin” Caine—was insistent that ISIS could be defeated in a week, if America committed enough force to the effort. Trump said that Caine then donned a MAGA cap, and said: “‘I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.’” Trump added that he told Caine he was not allowed to do that, “but they did it.”

If the president is telling the truth about this exchange, Caine shouldn’t be in the job. Senior officers, by law and military regulations, must avoid shows of partisan fealty, and such displays should never be the basis for promotion. The story, if true, is a strong indication of Trump’s political motives; Caine’s behavior in any case disqualifies him from the job. He appears to have had a fine career, and while it is not typical to pull an officer out of retirement to take the Chairman post, it is not unprecedented. But Trump, who has apparently been telling this story for years, is not choosing Caine because of his background; he’s elevating Caine in position and rank because he wants a Chairman who is wholly devoted to him.

The message to the rest of the military could not be clearer. Trump loathed Brown’s predecessor, General Mark Milley, and has floated the idea that Milley should be executed for actions he took at Chairman. (This idea came to him shortly after the publication of this magazine’s profile of Milley, by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, which detailed how Milley protected the Constitution from Trump.)

Trump and Hegseth have announced their intentions to fire several other senior officers—and perhaps even most ominously, including the head lawyers of each of the services. Now that Trump has captured the intelligence services, the Justice Department, and the FBI, the military is the last piece he needs to establish the foundations for authoritarian control of the U.S. government. None of this has anything to do with effectiveness, or “lethality,” or promoting “warfighters," or any other buzzwords. It is praetorianism, plain and simple.