Continuing his flurry of terminations and erasure of people of color for high-ranking federal positions, President Donald Trump has fired Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr, the Associated Press reports. He was the second Black general to serve as chairman following Colin Powell.
Announcing Brown’s dismissal on Truth Social, Trump called Brown an “outstanding leader.”
“I want to thank General Charles ‘CQ’ Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader and I wish a great future for him and his family.”
Trump said he would be nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine as Brown’s successor.
“General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience,” Trump wrote, adding that Caine “was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate.”
In a statement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced the firings of: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife, two more senior officers.
Franchetti is now the second top female military officer to be fired by the Trump administration after the termination of Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan the day after he took office.
Hegseth had previously took shots at Brown during an appearance on a podcast.
“First of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said. He also questioned if Brown was appointed to his position because he was Black.
“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. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote in his book.
Brown became the subject of criticism after he spoke out against the 2020 killing of George Floyd. Ever since he made the video to the Air Force titled “Here’s What I’m Thinking About,” MAGA Republicans characterized him as a proponent of the “woke” agenda.
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill said the firings were an attempt to politicize the military.
“A professional, apolitical military that is subordinate to the civilian government and supportive of the Constitution rather than a political party is essential to the survival of our democracy,” Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Friday. “For the sake of our troops and the well-being of every American, elected leaders — especially Senate Republicans — must defend that enduring principle against corrosive attempts to remake the military into a partisan force.”
According to a 2022 Defense Department demographic report, African Americans make up 17% of the military, but only 9% of officers were Black of the 1.3 million active-duty service members.
At the time of Brown’s appointment, it marked the first time in history that both the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the Joint Chiefs chairman were Black.
