The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Administration Fires Top Pentagon Officials, Military Lawyers

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Over the weekend, the Trump administration fired several high-ranking military leaders and announced it plans to fire over 5,000 probationary Pentagon employees starting this week. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, my name is Rose in Farmington, Minnesota. I'm recovering from an ACL tear that occurred while I was skiing. This podcast was recorded at 12.33 p.m. on Monday, February 24th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be waiting impatiently to get back to walking and driving. Okay, here's the show. I am entirely serious when I say this is why I don't ski. After a certain age, you're just begging for an ACL tear. I just got back from skiing in Montana. It was awesome. You risk-taker you. That's right. I have to tell you I was walking in from the parking lot today and felt a little

twinge in my heel and I was, this better not be some ACL thing. I'm over 40. Well, we wish you a speedy, speedy recovery. Hey there, it's the MPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis, I cover politics. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. I'm Tom Bowman, I cover the Pentagon.

And over the weekend, the Trump administration fired several high ranking military leaders, as well as announced that it plans to fire over 5,000 probationary Pentagon employees starting this week. Tom, there's a lot to talk about, but let's start at the top. President Trump announced on social media that he was going to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man by the name of C.Q. Brown Jr. Why is this job so important and how big of a deal is it that he's been fired?

It's a very big deal. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the top military advisor to the president. They usually stay in office four years. He was in there for about 16 months. They also fired the top Navy officer, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to hold the job, and they threw over the side the number two Air Force officer, General Jim Slife. This is unprecedented. When you say unprecedented, explain this to me, because even as a sort of news consumer of Pentagon News, he's not the first president to fire or hire a general because of a personal disagreement or a personal preference. Well, no, the important word here is cause.

Why are you being relieved? None of these people, not one of them, was given a cause why they've been relieved. The thread with all of them is the perception of they got the jobs because of race or gender or because this sense of woke. Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, wrote in his book, The War on Warriors,

that came out I think last year, that basically he questioned whether C.Q. Brown, African American, got the job because of his race or because of his skill. He's an F-16 pilot with more than a thousand hours in the cockpit. And then Lisa Fernketi, he also questioned her, did she get it because of her gender? And finally, the number two Air Force officer, General Jim Slife, after the George Floyd murder, he basically said, listen, you know, that we may have a problem with institutional racism in the Air Force, we have to deal with it head on. That's the thread with all of them. And C.Q. Brown had a video that, you know, was very impassioned about his experience as an African American as well, right? Exactly right. A very emotional video after George Floyd was killed.

He talked about the discrimination he felt rising up the ranks of the Air Force. And again, Hegseth in his book said C.Q. Brown with that was playing the race card. We should note though that Trump had appointed C.Q. Brown to the Pentagon in his first administration and even in announcing his firing, he wasn't as personally pejorative towards him as he has been towards other people. It didn't seem as personal as other Trump firings have been. Well, he nominated him to be the chief of staff of the Air Force and was effusive about him back at that time.

Tom, the man that Donald Trump says he's going to replace him with is a guy by the name of Dan Cain. What can you tell us about him? He is a lieutenant general, spent a lot of his time in the special operations community and also at the CIA. People I talk with that have known him for years say he's very well regarded. He's a great officer. The problem is he's never held a combatant command like, you know, central command, which

covers the Middle East or Southern command for Central and South America. And he also was never a service chief, you know, chief of staff of the Air Force, let's say. That is highly unusual. And actually by statute, the person coming in as chairman has to have one of those jobs. He's never run a large organization. But again, he's held in as chairman has to have one of those jobs. He's never run a large organization, but again, he's held in pretty high regard, but he's gonna have a really tough time running the Pentagon as a chairman. Domenico Cain is someone who will need to be confirmed by the

Senate, but I think we have seen play out that the Senate is not particularly interested in throwing up any roadblocks for people that Donald Trump wants in his administration. So he seems like he's probably in pretty good position to get the job. Yeah, and you would know this better than us with covering Congress. But yeah, I mean, this is what we've basically seen that Republicans have essentially said that they are going to approve nearly everybody who Trump has put forward. In fact, they've approved everybody. The one person who wound up not going forward was Matt Gaetz for attorney general, but he withdrew beforehand, seeing the writing on the wall.

But yeah, I mean, even if there's a couple of Republicans who say that they don't want to vote for someone, they're still able to get 51 votes for a lot of them. And that's actually one of the things that I thought was really fascinating during the last presidential administration with Biden and how many Democrats complained about having Joe Manchin in there and how he was, you know, taking out Biden's agenda and making it not progressive enough. And it's exactly things like this, though, that are reasons why you would want to have another person in there, you know, on your side, because these margins are so narrow. I mean, Domenico, Trump, I think, is enjoying a bit of a honeymoon in his

second term. He has a ton of support within the party. But don't you see some element of political risk here in that the Trump administration is just upending the Pentagon, the national security apparatus, and these are potentially politically risky moves? Well, the real risk is gonna come or the real political consequences will come when there's an actual crisis and it's not handled well. If that's the case then people will see that and notice. I also do think there's some political risk and obviously going too far. You know, how far he's going with slashing the federal government and going after diversity initiatives overall.

It's not that you can't find majorities of people who say that they don't think that there should be preferential hiring, for example. But I understand the military, you can find polls that will show military members or veterans being in favor of Trump, but some 40% or more of the military is non-white. And I think that this eventually, it will run into itself when you have enough people who feel like they're outside of the norm of what is acceptable within society and within the military. And one thing to point out here, Susan, is that what effect will this have on recruiting?

The Army recruited more women this past year than they did the previous year. So if I'm a woman wanting to join the Air Force or the Army and I look at a woman being thrown over the side who rose to the top ranks of the service, is that a good job for me? Or African Americans, right? If they're treating people this way and saying, oh, you just got the job because of race, why would I want to join that organization if they're already basically saying, you know, you're not up to standard? All right, let's take a quick break. And we're going to talk more about these firings when we get back.

And we're back. And Defense Secretary Hegseth this weekend also fired three judge advocates. These are people often referred to as JAGs for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. These are essentially military lawyers who make sure the US is complying with military law. And Tom Hegseth in the past and even in the present has made clear he doesn't hold these folks in very high regard. No, that's right. I mean, he considers them roadblocks. And he said that in his confirmation hearing, they're tying the hands of warfighters. And of course, there is a concern, you know, it's funny because everyone was

focused on CQ Brown and also Lisa Franchetti, the top officer in the Navy. We were all focused on that, me and others. We missed the Jags and people called me after the story came out about CQ Brown and Franchetti and said, Tom, look at the lawyers, look what they're doing. And what they're looking for, apparently, is more compliant lawyers. So we could have problems with, let's say, they want to use active duty troops on American streets,

which previous defense archivists said is not a good idea. You violate the Posse Comitatus Act after the Civil War, which basically says active duty troops should have no policing role on American cities. And finally I was talking with Frank Kendall who was Air Force Secretary under Joe Biden and he said one of his concerns is let's say you're doing a bombing run in Yemen or Iraq or Syria they're very very careful not to have any civilian casualties and the lawyers look through that with a fine-tooth comb.

That could go away that's his concern and that with a fine-tooth comb, that could go away. That's his concern and that's a concern of others. Tom, do you see any fairness to the argument that I think the supporters of Trump would say is that figures like this sometimes exist to minimize risk versus win a mission? I think that would be the argument, the hexis of others, that they make the military more risk averse and that maybe sometimes you need people who are more willing to be more bold and take risks to achieve their ends. I spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan and sometime in Syria.

The hands of the American service members are not tied. I've been on many combat operations and clearly they can do the job with the lawyers. Domenico, I also wanted to note that workers of the Pentagon are going to be affected by job cuts this week as part of the Department of Government Efficiency. The cost-cutting arm of the Trump administration expected to lay off as many as 5,000 is starting this week with more to come. Yeah, it's really fascinating that they're going to take aim at the Pentagon considering the fact that Republicans for decades have not been ones who want to cut anything at the Pentagon, considering the fact that Republicans for decades have

not been ones who want to cut anything from the Pentagon. They want to increase defense spending. It's more of a sort of lefty thing to say that there's way too much spending by the Pentagon. I mean, a lot of Democrats would say that they think that there's too much money that goes to defense contractors, for example. But the way that... I wonder how they're going to go about these firings or layoffs and the chaos that that could bring that we've seen in some of the other agencies and what that would mean to the sort of order that the Pentagon wants to be able to work under. If you're getting emails at the Pentagon saying, you know, you got to send five bullets on

what you did this week, and then you have someone say, no, don't do that. And then they say, yeah, you should do that I mean that's gonna create all kinds of chaos right and they're looking it up to fifty five thousand cuts in the Pentagon and also the defense agencies like Defense Intelligence Agency National Security Agency but they're doing a review of all of those just to see if it makes sense with the national security standard to fire all those people. I do think we should note, I think, about 55,000, but there's about 900,000 people that

fall under the employ of the Pentagon, Tom. That's right. Yeah. But still, if you're cutting 55,000 across the Pentagon and all the agencies, that's a pretty big deal. Tom, do you have a sense of just more broadly how the Pentagon is bracing for impact. And by that I mean it's been a long time since Congress or a Republican or Democratic president has shown a real interest in uprooting or reducing spending or

auditing the defense industry. And it seems like that there could be a bit of a reckoning under Donald Trump. Well I think so. I mean you know they are pushing for an audit which clearly makes sense from a taxpayer standpoint, right? But there is a lot of fear at the Pentagon among the senior ranks, you know, am I next? I'm walking on eggshells, you know, do I mention diversity at all ever? So, you know, what can I say, what can I not say? So I think everyone is kind of worried about the way ahead, not only with personnel issues, but also with issues like NATO.

Are they going to reduce troops in NATO? Are they going to move troops from, let's say, Germany to Poland? What is the way ahead here? And again, everyone is nervous. They just don't get a sense of this. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. I'm Tom Bowman. I cover the Pentagon and thanks for listening to the NPR politics podcast