Senate Democrat after Brown ouster: Trump's 'quest for power' endangers military
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) offered President Trump a fiery rebuke late Friday, admonishing the president for the administration's moves to overhaul the Defense Department, which he says are rankling the rank-and-file and poisoning the military's “ethos.”
"Donald Trump’s quest for power is endangering our military," Reed, a former Army paratrooper, wrote in an op-ed published by The Washington Post.
“The implications for our national security cannot be overstated. A clear message is being sent to military leaders: Failure to demonstrate personal and political loyalty to Trump could result in retribution, even after decades of honorable service,” he added later.
His criticism came just after Trump ousted Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump fired Brown, a four-star pilot and only the second African American to hold the title, on Friday, while praising him as an “accomplished” pilot and “warfighter with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who confirmed Brown’s dismissal in his own Friday statement, announced that Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa M. Franchetti and vice chief of staff of the Air Force Gen. Jim Slife were also removed from their posts. A day into Trump’s second term, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan was also let go..
Apart from Slife and Franchetti, Hegseth — a former Fox News host — said judge advocates general for the Navy, Army and Air Force would also be removed.
Reed, who sits on the Senate Armed Services panel, argued that the removal of those military lawyers will hamper the military’s oversight.
“In particular, firing the military’s most senior legal advisers is an unprecedented and explicit move to install officers who will yield to the president’s interpretation of the law, with the expectation they will be little more than yes men on the most consequential questions of military law,” Reed wrote in the Post.
The Democratic lawmaker, who was elected to the Senate in 1996, argued the firings, which are expected to continue next week, will “create a dangerous ripple up and down the ranks. Leaders might hesitate to refuse illegal orders, speak their minds about best practices or call out abuses of power.”
He also noted that “commanders expect their troops to give them the facts, straight and true, because lives are on the line."
"But firing officers as a political litmus test poisons this military ethos," Reed added. "It sends an immediate signal to service members that the best military advice might have career-ending consequences.”
Reed, who is also on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said Trump was ignoring existing legislation, “injecting politics and non-merit principles into the military promotion system.”
The Rhode Island senator further warned that the U.S. will face threats “in the years ahead,” therefore the country has to “ensure that the rising generation of military leaders is prepared to meet them.”
He argued that if younger Americans sense that the U.S. military is a place where its leaders get “punished” at the hands of the politicians in charge, then recruiting numbers will fall off even more.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) thanked Brown “for his decades of honorable service to our nation” in a Friday statement, adding that he was confident Trump and Hegseth would pick a “qualified and capable successor for the critical position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also offered praise for the outgoing chair but acknowledged that a president deserves to pick their own team.
"President Trump, like every president, deserves to pick military advisors that he knows, trusts and has a relationship with," he wrote Friday on social platform X.
He also vowed to help advance the president's pick to replace Brown, Air Force Lt. Gen Dan "Razin" Caine, across the finish line.
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