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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., whom President Trump had threatened to fire once he took office, said Monday that he plans to remain the nation’s highest-ranking military official.
“This is my plan,” he told reporters as he left the U.S. Capitol building, asreported by CNN.
Brown, who attended Trump’s inauguration ceremony in the Capitol rotunda, has been the target for months of vows by Trump and his associates to immediately fire U.S. military leaders they see as too focused on diversity initiatives.
Among those attacking Brown was Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, who said in a podcast in early November that Brown, who is black, should be fired.
“First of all, you need to fire the chairman of the Board of Chiefs. Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke crap needs to go,” Hegseth said on the “Shawn Ryan Show.”
That rhetoric appeared to change after Trump and Brown met in a luxury box at the Army-Navy football game in December.
NBC News reported at the time that the two spoke one-on-one for about 20 minutes and that Trump was “changing his tune” about the four-star general.
Aimage later postedTrump’s camp made the rounds on social media showing the two sitting next to each other chatting during the game.
On October 1, 2023, Brown became the second black man to hold the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs, joining the late Colin Powell. The chair normally has a four-year term, meaning Brown could remain in the role until September 30, 2027.
Trump has a bitter relationship with retired General Mark Milley, whom Trump appointed to the post during his first term. Milley has publicly clashed with Trump and was among those who received last-minute pardons from President Biden on Monday.
A former Air Force fighter pilot who eventually rose through the ranks to become the service’s chief of staff, Brown made waves when he posted an emotional video addressing the 2020 protests in the United States sparked by George’s death Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I’m thinking about how emotional I am, not just for George Floyd, but for the many African Americans who have suffered the same fate as George Floyd,” Brown said in the video. “I’m thinking about our two children and how we had to prepare them to live in two worlds.”
He continued, “I’m thinking back to my career in the Air Force where I was often the only African American in my squadron or, as a senior officer, the only African American in the room.”
