Bulwark Takes - Trump FIRES Top Military Brass in Friday Night PURGE

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Sam Stein and Bill Kristol talk about the wild military firings that went down Friday night! 

Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, back on Saturday morning, joined by Bill Kristol. As always, thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe to the feed. We're going to get right into it because, as is usual with the Trump administration, a lot of news happens on Friday night, and this Friday was no different. We had a mass, I guess we could call it mass purge of top military brass, seven in all, fired by President Trump on Friday night.

The biggest name, of course, was General Charles Brown. He's the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chairman, four-star fighter pilot known as CQ. He was not the only one. We also saw the sacking of Lisa Franchetti. She was the first woman to lead the Navy. The vice chief of the Air Force was also sacked. And then the top lawyers for Army, Navy, and Air Force also sacked. We're going to get into the context in a little bit,

but I know you want to say something about C.Q. Brown first, Bill. So why don't you talk a little bit about this and the role that he played and sort of the legacy that he now leaves? Well, just on the broad context for one second, we're used to people coming in and sacking the leaders of, not sacking, they just resigned, the leaders of the civilian agencies. And no question that Austin wasn't going to stay as Secretary of Defense when Trump took over and he put Hexeth in and Hexeth got confirmed by the Senate. This is very unusual to do this with the military. Now, over time, do you move in officers you think might be better suited to the jobs? Do you think you correct mistakes the preceding administration made?

Absolutely. Occasionally, you make a more abrupt change in the middle of a war. That happened a bit during the Iraq War, for example. But this is quite extraordinary. And, in fact, Trump said in his statement that these were all defied people cq brown had done a served the country very well so what was the urgency in replacing him the cq brown wasn't going to disobey trump's orders to try to downsize the civilians at the defense department you know in fact it's quite the opposite he found his uh he found out

he had been terminated when he was down in the border because he was executing on Trump's desired mission to put more military resources towards border security. So he had been a dutiful soldier when he was sacked. Right. Don't reappoint him for a second to your term. The abruptness of it, the willingness to just ignore norms, not laws, but norms about how military, how and when one replaces military leaders, not again, the civilian people there or elsewhere, even in the Justice Department and so forth, is pretty extraordinary. Just on CQ Brown for a second, I'm this is now I'm reporting what people I trust have told me, people I trust, trust who served in the Reagan administration and other

Republican administrations and aren't big fans of DEI programs in general, that that is one of the real slanders against General Brown. Extremely impressive man, apparently very open-minded, a reformer within the military who was making the Air Force. Trump made him, incidentally, Chief of Staff of the Air Force in the first Trump term. He then becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Very much involved in updating the military's understanding of technology, had been in command of air assets in the Pacific, so very much involved in the pivot to the Indo-Pacific and to taking on China. So from any kind of rational point of view, he's a guy you would want there for this moment in foreign policy and national security policy.

And even according to Trump's own and Musk's, I guess, own desire to make it more high tech and more adaptable and all that. That's what Brown was partly about, about innovation and so forth. And again, move him out after six months, sure. But this kind of firing of him, really bad and a terrible precedent, but also just totally unfair. I mean, Hexeth attacked him as a DEI appointee. You know what the explanation for that is? Racism. Hexeth knows nothing. And I looked at the book for a second, and you've looked at that book more than I have,

I think, for your sins. There's zero explanation. It's not like this guy was obviously bumped up over other people, which is total nonsense. He had served a long time. He had been promoted. He had been promoted, you know, in accord with normal promotion things. And Trump made him chairman of the Air Force. Yeah. And so the context here is so when Trump did appoint him chairman of the Air Force, head of the Air Force, he did actually go out of his way to note the historic nature of the appointment. He said it's the first black person who's held this title. This was the first Trump administration. Hexeth in his book

and on subsequent podcasts called for his removal. He said he has to be fired. His explanation was not so much that Brown was black, although that was obviously, you know, part of it. It was that Brown had focused too much of his stewardship as the Joint Chiefs, at the Joint Chiefs, on DEI initiatives, on getting more recruitment from minority communities. And that was where Hegseth came down. It is notable that in the brief time since Hegseth has been confirmed, that they have been getting along or working together. And this was kind of, I mean, it was anticipated, but it was also sort of very much abrupt and out of the blue to a degree.

Like I said, Brown was in some hotel in Texas when he got the call, according to reports. And just one last thing on the kind of details. I think the bigger picture is more important. But the person who's being promoted, I don't know much about him. I'm certainly not going to opine about him anymore. A guy named Dan Cain. Dan Cain.

Nicknamed Raising. That Trump seems to love because he praised Trump. Yeah, exactly. Raising Cain. I mean, Trump tells stories about him, which may or may not be true, incidentally, about things he said to Trump and the one or two times they met, apparently, in 2018, 19. He seems to, he's been involved, he left the Air Force to go into the Air Force Guard for a few years and got involved in some Silicon Valley stuff.

And those actually, he was involved in a firm run by, I think, Jared Kushner's brother, right? Josh Kushner and stuff. So there's some relation. He may know some of the sort of Silicon Valley people who are influential with Trump, which is fine. I mean, maybe or maybe not. We don't know. as chief of the Air Force or in charge of a region as a combatant commander, is the law says you should have one of those two qualifications to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Now, you can override that. The president can have it. And you could get a waiver. Could get a waiver. But which, again, brings home how extraordinary this is. He has to go out and get a waiver for the person he's bringing in to jump over an awful lot of active duty four stars, including the currently serving chief, about whom there were no complaints, so to speak. So again, he's going out of his way to pick General Kane. So let's talk about that. I mean, so the question obviously is why? Why do it,

right? And we can, let's guess. I mean, we're guessing, right? But I think we have reasonable context and history to inform our guesses here. So why do you think it is? I think we have reasonable context and history to inform our guesses here. So I don't know this. I think people are focused a lot on the individuals. And I guess my broader point would be General Cain owes everything to Donald Trump. He's not a guy who already was there when Trump took over. So he may be a perfectly decent and fine public servant and want to do the right thing. But still, his attitude is going to be more that, I'm going to put it this way, of Marco Rubio or Michael Walsh,

both of whom were not regarded as particularly Trumpy when they were in the Senate and the House, respectively. But as Secretary of State, look at what Rubio is doing. And it's because he's totally dependent on and owes everything to Trump. So I think Trump wants people who owe everything to him in there. He wants loyalists. And I do think it's the overall it's the, it's the overall

message. Well, talk a bit, Bill, talk a bit about how the Mark Milley history probably informs Trump's view of this. Well, it's interesting. Yeah. Because so he, he picked Milley and like, was it, wasn't it right after the army Navy game? I have some vague memory of that. I forget. I'll have to look that one up. Remember that? It was Thanksgiving 2018. And, you know, he went to the game, maybe Milley went with him. I can't remember. I mean have to look that one up. Remember that? It was Thanksgiving of 2018. And, you know, he went to the gate. Maybe Milley went with him. I can't remember. I mean, at the time, the people I knew who sort of followed this stuff closely, Milley wasn't the consensus choice to be chairman.

I think people thought the Air Force chief of staff, Goldfein, I think his name was, was more impressive. But whatever. Milley was chair. And he was Army chief of staff. He was qualified. I think Trump thought he was appointing a loyalist and it turned out Milley stood up to Trump famously, obviously. Made a mistake at Lafayette Square,

but then stood up to him after November 3rd and privately before November 3rd as well and worked with Pompeo and with Esper to stop some really bad things from happening. And I think the lesson Trump learned from that is Milley looked like, at the time in 2018, some of my friends thought Milley's kind of sucking off to Trump a little bit. I mean, he sort of wants, you know, he wants Trump to pick him. Understandable, I suppose. Trump liked the way he looked. The lesson Trump learned is you really need someone who has no

independent standing. I think that's the key point. You need someone who doesn't have his own network. C.Q. Brown knew a lot of people and he'd been around for a long time. He'd been at senior levels. He knew the defense community, the national security community. He wasn't going to simply assume that if Trump said X, there were no other points of view worth at least entertaining or recommending to Trump as the advisor to Trump and so forth. Kaine hasn't been in that situation. He served in the Biden administration, amusingly enough, as the top military guy over at the CIA. There's a position at the CIA, quite senior,

where you're the kind of liaison, in effect, with the military. And he worked closely with Bill Burns, Biden's CIA director. So it's not as if he's a raging MAGA person, presumably, but he doesn't have the kind of independent standing that even Milley had, let alone C.Q. Brown. And I think that's key in Trump's mind. Right. And from how I view it is that Trump really got angry with Milley for speaking out. And also the Lafayette Square incident where Milley was very upset about the use of National

Guard to go and basically suppress protesters, of course, obviously speaking out about what happened on January 6th. And for Trump, ultimately it just comes down to loyalty, right? It's like, do you feel like this guy is going to be loyal to you? And if he stops being loyal to you, you kick him to the curb. And so Trump 2.0 is sort of built around this idea that we are going to just start fresh and bring in all the loyalists so that we can at least start by trusting him. And that is certainly looks to be the case in this situation. Now, just before we go, the response, the retort

from the Trump people online to any criticism of this is that this is totally kosher. I think no one's arguing that it's illegal or anything. You can do this. It's just not within the norms. But also they're like, well, you know, Truman sacked MacArthur. Obama sacked McChrystal. Like this happens all the time. In fact, those are two very unique situations that have no relation to what we're talking about here because those actually had, you know, pretext to the reasons. Yeah. Exactly exactly so talk a

little about that i mean do you see any historical parallel or now pretty hard to find one i mean i think what this is truly about i'll just make two quick points is breaking all institutional resistance to trump i mean if you put it together the what happened it's happened to the justice department and the fbi and intelligence. He wants the power agencies to be utterly responsive to him, loyal to him, beyond loyal, you know, to have fealty to him. And that's part of this. Now, that's not to say that Kaine might not surprise him, but that's what he's doing his best to move in that direction. And then final point, the firing. Taking no chances.

Right. And firing the Jags, that I believe is totally unprecedented. These are the top lawyers, obviously, in each of the services. They each have their own. What are the rationales they're using? And the media, I'd say, has bought this a little too much, in my opinion, from skimming the news this morning. Well, he wants people who are in sync with the America First agenda. Well, the Jags aren't in sync with the – he doesn't know whether the Jags are in sync with the America First agenda. Well, the Jags aren't in sync with the, he doesn't know whether the Jags are in sync

with the America First agenda or the Bush agenda or the Biden agenda. You know, they're Jags, right? They're lawyers who opine on whether, among other things, whether orders enforce, obviously the laws help, you know, supervise the enforcement of laws within the military, including against some of the war criminals. I mean, Hegseth has been fairly upfront about that, too.

He wants to get rid of people who he thinks unnecessarily constrain military force. I think he sort of apologizes for some of the worst features that the military can pursue. And so that is a way to get rid of those roadblocks. Totally. So part of it is these people presided over a system that found some of the people that Trump pardoned to be war criminals. Who Hegseth was friends with yeah but also even more broadly these are the people who would have to say if an order came down that was questionable using troops of the u.s insurrection

act all the obvious things that except the millie was balking at and working very hard to prevent these are the people who would say this is a lawful order or no i have real questions about this and at least i'm going to go to the secretary of defense and say that in my opinion uh members event. These are the people who would say this is a lawful order or no, I have real questions about this. And at least I'm going to go to the Secretary of Defense and say that in my opinion, members of the Air Force or the Army or the Navy should not have, should at least have questions about obeying this order or we need to bring it back up to the president and say it's not, he does not want independent, they don't want independent. For me, that's very ominous. Because again, there's not even a pretense that the Jags have a point of view about you know about i don't know whether we should do more with china or whether we should sell out ukraine it's

not about it's just interpretation of the law i don't want any obstacles it's more like the justice department if you want you know or like that is i don't want any obstacles to personal loyalty to me in any of these top positions yeah well. Well, it's ominous, but to be honest, it's all ominous. And so it kind of fits into the general vibe. And so I'm not like, you know, I'm not totally thrown off by this. I'm stewing in it. Maybe it's a bit of a wake up call of how ominous things are. I do think there's been a little bit of that going on. You've reported on this a lot in the last few days in terms of what Musk has been up to. A little bit of a wake up about that maybe now the

military you know there's a lot of people well i would say so but then you had roger wicker who's head of the armed services committee put out a statement last night and no objection whatsoever to it right i mean he's just like okay cool uh and so you get to the place where we've been continuously you and i where it's like well what's the point of these people? Why did you run for office? At what point do you actually want to exert some independence or take your job seriously? And we're not quite there yet. A good question. All right, Bill, thanks so much for waking up and doing this.

Appreciate it. And thank you guys for tuning in and watching us. Again, do subscribe to the feed. We really appreciate it. And we'll be in touch. Bye.