Trump fires top US general CQ Brown in major Pentagon shake-up

As part of a wider shake-up of top military leadership, US President Donald Trump has fired US President Donald Trump’s Force General CQ Brown as its chairman.

“I want to thank General Charles “CQ” Brown for his over 40 years of service to our nation, including as our current Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, “I wish for a great future for him and his family. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader.”

Brown’s immediate dismissal by the US president was not supported by the president’s statement.

The president announced that he would nominate former Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine for the position of the next Gordon Brown, breaking tradition by removing a retired lieutenant from service to become the most senior military officer.

However, Brown, a former fighter pilot who served as the second Black officer to ascend to the position, had previously come under fire for his public support for Black Lives Matter following the police killing of Black man George Floyd, giving rise to the administration’s fight against “woke culture” and the push for diversity.

Prior to now, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had suggested that Brown was hired because of his race.

committing a “massacre”

Hegseth announced that Jim Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, and Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, were also being fired.

Franchetti, who has commanded at all naval levels, becomes the second female officer to be fired by the Trump administration.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhao Castro said Democrats are calling the firing of the Pentagon’s top brass a “massacre”.

“In all, the Pentagon is losing six members of its top brass, which is again a break from tradition in a normally non-partisan US military”, Castro explained.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Democratic Senator Jack Reed criticized Brown’s firing as a “typo of political loyalty test.”

Or because of factors relating to diversity and gender that are unrelated to performance, Reed said. “Or, it undermines the trust and professionalism that our servicemembers demand in order to fulfill their missions.