Pentagon officials anxious Trump may fire the military’s top general

Defense officials are getting anxious about the possibility of the incoming Trump administration firing or not renewing the term of Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, due to perceptions that he is out of step with the president-elect on the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion programs.

The Trump administration’s DOD transition team — led by former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie — has yet to officially set foot in the Pentagon since the election was called, owing to the transition team’s refusal so far to accept assistance from the federal government. But concern is beginning to bubble up that Brown, who spoke publicly about the challenges of rising through the military as a Black man as Donald Trump urged the Defense Department to crack down on the George Floyd protests in 2020, could be swept out by a president-elect who has promised to make the Pentagon less “woke.”

The chair’s tenure normally is staggered so they serve the end of one administration and the beginning of another. The traditional four-year term is broken up so that a chair has to be reaffirmed by a president after two years.

For Brown, that two-year mark arrives in September 2025, well into Trump’s first year back in office. There is no rule, however, prohibiting Trump from dismissing him sooner. Any such move would be extraordinary, though not unprecedented.

“There is some anxiety,” said one current DOD official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. “I think they are immediately worried,” the official said of Brown’s team.

“He’s a DEI/woke champion,” a second DOD official said. “Can imagine he’ll be gone quite quickly.”

Two people close to the Trump transition team mentioned that Brown has long been a target of congressional Republicans who accused the Pentagon of conducting social experiments with diversity programs, to the detriment of traditional military tasks.

Both people said there is no hard plan to keep or dismiss Brown, but that Pentagon officials up and down the chain of command are being evaluated.

Another person familiar with the Trump transition team’s thinking said they believe that “C.Q. Brown, he’s going to be an obstacle in all sorts of ways and it’s just not worth it.”

Brown did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Trump’s team did not directly address Brown’s future at the Pentagon, but did not deny they are considering making changes. “The…