We are all less safe after Trump's purge of military leadership
One explanation for these unprecedented changes is Mr. Trump’s naked bigotry and fear of strong women. The other explanation is even worse.
Yesterday Donald Trump took steps to MAGAfy our military. He fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the middle of his term. He fired the head of the Navy. He got rid of the Judge Advocates General (JAG) at the Army, Navy and Air Force.
None of this makes America safer. None of it makes America more lethal- and let me remind you that making America lethal again was the singular promise of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his confirmation hearings.
If it isn’t about making us safe or more deadly, what is it? Well, we actually know the answer to that question. And it is unimaginably bad.
Hegseth wrote a book last year. In it he wondered how General Brown, a Black man, got the job as Chair of the Joint Chiefs. He asked:
“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."
Those are Hegseths’ words. He wrote them in a book that Trump and the MAGA crowd cited when they made him Secretary of Defense.
Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. /Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
This isn’t just racist dog whistling. It is also a straight up lie. Gen. Brown was nominated to chair the Chief of the Air Force by Donald Trump in his first term. No way he got the job because of the color of his skin, and Hegseth knows it. In fact, Brown has a long and distinguished record of military service, leadership, and patriotism. He is a professional soldier who always did the task America asked him to do. Just this week, Brown was on the border reviewing the troops sent there to guard against what the Trump administration now thinks is the biggest threat we face, an invasion from Mexico. That’s where he was when he was fired.
Admiral Lisa Franchetti is the first woman to lead a military service. She has spent nearly half of her 40-year-long military career at sea. She commanded a destroyer, a destroyer squadron, two aircraft carrier groups, our entire Naval force in Korea, and the whole sixth fleet in the Mediterranean. She has more leadership skills in her little finger than the frequently drunk Mr. Hegseth can find in a whole bottle.
By the way, on his first day in office, Trump also fired the other woman leading a branch of the armed forces, Coast Guard Commander Linda Fagan.
One explanation for these unprecedented changes, for the upheaval in our military, for making us less safe by purging leadership like this, is Mr. Trump’s naked bigotry and fear of strong women.
But as bad as that is, it is not the worst. The decapitation of professional military leadership and the elevation of uniformed bootlickers is meant to make our armed forces loyal to the president rather than to the country.
Trump says he will nominate a retired guy, Air Force Lt. Gen Dan Caine to be the next Chair of the Joint Chiefs. Caine is a three-star general, who has command and combat experience, though nothing approaching the experience of either Brown or Franchetti. In fact, not enough to qualify for the job. He will need a Presidential waiver.
Where Caine does stand out, however, is that he was willing to break with military protocol to demonstrate his loyalty to MAGA while in uniform. Trump told the right-wing group CPAC that he met Caine during his first term while visiting Iraq. He says Caine came up to him wearing a MAGA hat and said, “I love you sir. I think you’re great sir. I’ll kill for you sir.”
It doesn’t matter that Trump could be lying about this. He is putting Caine in the job because that’s the way he thinks. That’s what he wants.
And that brings us to the JAG lawyers that also got canned. These are the lawyers who make sure the military operates within the law. In Trump world, however, the law is whatever he says it is, and it is nothing else. So why bother with lawyers?
Mr. Trump has talked publicly about deploying the military in America, against Americans. Those lawyers would stand in his way.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island is the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. He reacted to this purge last night. He said,
"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.”
I appreciate his opposition, but anodyne discontent does not meet the moment. Senator, this is a coup, designed to give a power-mad and dictatorial ruler personal control over the most powerful military on the planet, and to release that military from the constraints of law and decency.
Americans, if we still value our freedom, need to drive this president’s poll numbers down so precipitously that even the MAGA members of the United States Senate will reject Caine’s nomination, and restore the judge advocates to their posts.