US President Donald Trump fired the country’s senior military officer as part of an extraordinary Friday night purge at the Pentagon that injected politics into the selection of the nation’s top military leaders.

General Charles Q. Brown Jr, a four-star fighter pilot known as CQ who became only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job, is to be replaced by a little-known retired three-star air force general, Dan Caine, who endeared himself to the President when they met in Iraq six years ago.

In all, six Pentagon officials were fired, including Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the navy; General James Slife, the vice-chief of the air force; and the top lawyers for the army, navy and air force.

The decision to fire General Brown, which Trump announced in a message on Truth Social, reflects the President’s insistence that the military’s leadership is too mired in diversity issues, has lost sight of its role as a combat force to defend the country and is out of step with his “America First” movement.

Joint chiefs chairmen traditionally remain in place as administrations change, regardless of the President’s political party. But current White House and Pentagon officials said they wanted to appoint their own top leaders.

In a statement, defence secretary Pete Hegseth thanked Admiral Franchetti and General Slife “for their service and dedication to our country” and requested nominations for their replacements.

Hegseth did not say why he was firing the judge advocates general. But in his Senate confirmation hearing last month, he criticised military lawyers for placing needless legal restrictions on soldiers in battle — putting “his or her own priorities in front of the warfighters, their promotions, their medals, in front of having the backs of those making the tough calls on the front lines”.

Hegseth has previously said General Brown should be fired because of his “woke” focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in the military.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs,” Hegseth said in an appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show in November. He added that any general involved with DEI efforts should be fired. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it,” he said. “That’s the only litmus test we care about.”

On Hegseth’s first day at the Pentagon, however, he stood next to General Brown, who became chairman in October 2023, and said he looked forward to working with him.

But it soon became clear that General Brown had not been welcomed into Trump’s inner circle. He has not been invited to key meetings with the President, officials said.

It was a significant reversal for Trump from 2020, when he nominated General Brown to be the air force’s chief of staff. At the time, the President noted the historic significance of his decision to appoint the “first-ever African American military service chief”, writing on social media that the general was “a Patriot and Great Leader”.

General Brown had told aides repeatedly that he would not resign. On Friday, he was in El Paso and at the southwestern border, reviewing the military’s latest mission of helping to carry out Trump’s immigration directives.

Trump did not say in his post why he was firing General Brown. “He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family,” the President wrote. General Brown found out he was being removed when Hegseth telephoned him at his hotel in El Paso on Friday evening, a military official said.

General Caine retired with three stars, as a lieutenant general. 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.

It was unclear whether General Caine would need a congressional waiver; a congressional aide said the President had some latitude to choose whom he wanted and that exceptions could be made for national security reasons.

Regardless of whether he requires one, he will need to be confirmed by the Senate.

In the past, the position has been viewed as one that, like the military itself, spans administrations.

In his message on Truth Social, Trump said he was honoured to nominate “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 inter-agency and special operations experience”.

In recent years, 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, Trump said the general claimed it would take a week to defeat the group; in another, he said four weeks.

Trump has also claimed that General Caine, during their meeting in Iraq in December 2018, donned a “Make America Great Again” hat, in defiance of military guidelines that active-duty troop should not wear political paraphernalia. General Caine has told aides that he has never worn a MAGA hat.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump again praised General Caine’s counterterrorism skills. “During my first term, Razin was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate,” Trump said. “It was done in record-setting time, a matter of weeks. Many so-called military ‘geniuses’ said it would take years to defeat ISIS. General Caine, on the other hand, said it could be done quickly, and he delivered.”

In fact, by December 2018 when Trump visited General Caine in Iraq, other senior US officials were saying that the final defeat of the last remnants of the Islamic State was only months away, although rebuilding Iraq would probably take years.

Trump has fixated on the position of the joint chiefs chairman since 2019, when he picked General Mark A. Milley, General Brown’s predecessor, a decision the President came to bitterly regret.

Trump has complained in particular about General Milley’s calls to his Chinese counterpart during the waning weeks of the President’s first term. In a post on social media, Trump called the act “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Having a loyalist as his top military adviser is now paramount to Trump, aides say.

The dismissal of General Brown comes amid growing tumult at the Pentagon, the largest federal agency with three million employees, including 1.3 million service members. Hegseth has ordered senior military and defence department officials to draw up plans to cut 8 per cent from the military budget over each of the next five years, officials said on Wednesday.

In a memo issued on Tuesday, Hegseth said a number of branches in the military and the Pentagon should turn in budget-cutting proposals by Monday, two officials said. The memo listed 17 exceptions to the proposed cuts, including military operations at the southern border.

The decision to replace General Brown with General Caine was made over the past two weeks and was tightly held within a small group of senior administration officials, according to two people with knowledge of the deliberations.

While Hegseth was in Europe last week, General Caine met with Vice-President J.D. Vance and then with Trump. Hegseth and General Caine spoke several times, and Hegseth advocated his appointment, one of the people said.

While reports of lists of senior general and admirals targeted for dismissal have circulated on Capitol Hill for weeks, administration officials said most senior House and Senate leaders were not consulted before Trump’s decision to relieve General Brown.

In a statement on Friday night, Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee — the panel that approves all military nominations — praised General Brown, but made no mention of General Caine, who has not yet been officially nominated.

“I thank Chairman Brown for his decades of honourable service to our nation,” Wicker said in a statement. “I am confident Secretary Hegseth and President Trump will select a qualified and capable successor for the critical position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

New York Times News Service