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- President Ousts Top General as Part of Purge
President Ousts Top General as Part of Purge
Attempting to root out what he sees as military's diversity focus
Matt Davis
February 23, 2025
Hey, friends. For those of you who are new here, I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each morning if you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn. And I get a shameless 80 cents for everyone who subscribes to this golf newsletter, so if eight of you do that, I’ll cover the cost of this morning’s newspaper! 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 (I’ll never charge subscribers!) Now, let’s read the news…
This morning’s newspaper included a photograph of some Nazis at a rally last week in Munich. I decided to cover it up with a couple of bodega bagels so that you don’t have to.
Imagine firing a well qualified Black man and then nominating a less qualified white dude to fill his shoes—so much less qualified, in fact, that he’d need special approval to take up the post. That would be the opposite of a diversity hire, right? Like, it would be a white supremacist hire. Well unfortunately, you don't need to imagine any of this because this morning’s lead story by Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Jonathan Swan chronicles the Friday night purge of General Charles Q. Brown, Jr.
“General 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 little-known retired three-part Air Force General, Dan Caine, who endeared himself to the president when they met in Iraq six years ago. “
To recap: A four star general is being replaced by a retired three star general. What’s the difference between the men? Apart from their race, the white guy also kissed up to Trump. How? Trump has said he defied military guidelines and wore a MAGA hat during their meeting. Caine has denied ever having done so, but, you know. If Donald Trump says he did it then I’m inclined to believe him.
The firing was part of a larger purge which included firing the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Incoming defense secretary and violent drunk, Pete Hegseth, says he wants his military to be less fettered by legal considerations on the battlefield. He also told a podcast in November that General Brown should be fired, adding that any general involved with D.E.I. efforts should be fired.
“Either you’re in for war fighting, and that’s it,” he said. “That’s the only litmus test we care about.”
In a 2024 book, Mr. Hegseth questioned whether General Brown was selected because he was Black.
“Was it because of his skin color? or his skill?” he wrote. “We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems fair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter.”
That’s an oddly evasive way to say you think someone was hired because he was Black. Then again, Trump’s people have made a habit of doing and saying white supremacist things and then denying them lately. Here’s Steve Bannon last Thursday doing a gesture that even the French far-right described as a Nazi Salute. Look at the expression on his face. It says “I know I’m doing this, and you know I’m doing this, but I’m going to do it quickly enough and ambiguously enough that I can later half deny it if I get into too much trouble.”
As today’s story points out, Trump hired General Brown in 2020, calling him a “patriot and a great leader.” So the turnaround is awkward. Meanwhile his would-be replacement, General Caine, retired as a lieutenant general. As the story points out:
“By statute, anyone picked to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is supposed to have served as a combatant commander, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or as the top uniformed officer of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Space Force.”
In other words, he’s not qualified for the job. He might need a congressional wavier to serve, although a congressional aide told reporters that the president “had some latitude to choose whom he wanted and that exceptions could be made for national security reasons.”
I’m wondering if the president would make such an exception for a Black hire. There’s a clear answer: No.
More about that MAGA hat allegation:
In his message on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said he was honored to be nominating “Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” calling him an “accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
In recent years, Mr. Trump has publicly lauded General Caine for telling him that the Islamic State could be defeated far more quickly than his advisers had suggested. The details of the story, which could not be independently verified, have shifted over time. In one version, Mr. Trump said the general claimed it would take a week to defeat the group; in another, he said four weeks.
Mr. Trump has also claimed that General Caine, during their meeting in Iraq in December 2018, donned a “Make America Great Agin” hat, in defiance of military guidelines that active-duty troops should not wear political paraphernalia. General Caine has told aides that he has never worn a MAGA hat.”
Mr. Trump has “fixated on the position of the Joint Chiefs chairman since 2019,” the story continues, when he picked Gen. Mark A. Milley, General Brown’s predecessor. Mr. Trump has since complained about General Milley’s calls to his Chinese counterpart during the waning weeks of the president’s first term as a sign of disloyalty.
“Having a loyalist as his top military adviser is now paramount to Mr. Trump, aides say.”
The purge has irked senior Democrats. Senator Jack Reed issued a statement:
“Firing uniformed leaders as a type of political loyalty test, or for reasons relating to diversity and gender that have nothing to do with performance, erodes the trust and professionalism that our service members require to achieve their missions.”
Mr. Trump has now fired four four-star officers in the past month. He also fired Adm. Linda L. Fagan, the first female officer to serve as the commandant of the Coast Guard, in his first 24 hours in the job.
In a separate story, Helene Cooper recounts a video made by General Brown during the Black Lives Matter protests.
“In abruptly firing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Friday night purge at the Pentagon, Mr. Trump did not publicly give a reason. In fact, the four-star fighter pilot with 40 years of service was at the border tending to one of the president’s highest priorities when he was dismissed.
But privately, Trump advisers point to a video that General Brown recorded in the furious days after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, an act that sparked a social justice movement. In the four-minute video, General Brown reflected on his experiences as an African American pilot in the Air Force.”
The video itself sounds remarkable and reflective.
“In his video, General Brown continued: “I’m thinking about wearing the same flight suit, with the same wings on my chest as my peers, and then being questioned by another military member, ‘are you a pilot.’”
He limited his words to his own experience, and reflected on the other world in which he lived, the Black one. “I’m thinking about being a captain at the O Club with my squadron, and being told by other African Americans that I wasn’t Black enough, since I was spending more time with my squadron than with them.”
He spoke of how most of his mentors could not relate to his experience as a Black man. He spoke of wondering whether airmen who have not had similar experiences “don’t see racism as a problem because it doesn’t happen to them, or whether they’re empathetic.”
If you ask me, that sounds like the level of self-reflection and dedication that I’d support in the leader of our military. As opposed to, say, violent drunkenness, or wearing the right hat.
Thanks for reading and please talk to your friends about what’s in the newspaper!
Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.