According to two persons with knowledge of the matter, President-elect Donald Trump may have postponed his plans to remove General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by meeting with him in a luxury box during last weekend’s Army-Navy football game.
In reference to Brown in particular, Trump and his close allies have been vowing for months to replace U.S. military officials who they believe are overly focused on diversity projects. However, the two people who were aware of the conversation said that the meeting went well.
According to the two individuals, Trump and Brown met last Saturday during the second quarter of the yearly military resentment game at Northwest Stadium in Maryland. Sitting in the owner’s box, Trump and Brown had a one-on-one conversation for roughly twenty minutes.
According to the two, they got along well and the president-elect is now reconsidering his stance on Brown. It now seems that Trump will not fire Brown immediately.
According to one person involved with the conversation, Brown congratulated Trump on his election and made it plain that he was prepared to collaborate with the President, saying that [Trump] appreciated that. Trump later informed a companion that the discussion went well and that Brown was performing well.
According to the two individuals, Trump is now more likely to retain the Chairman. On October 1, 2023, Brown, also referred to as “C.Q.,” took over as Chairman. He is eligible to continue in the job until the end of his four-year tenure in 2027.
Brown seen as a source of stability
Since Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, is battling to be confirmed, a number of Republican lawmakers and retired generals have been pleading with him not to fire Brown, arguing that it could be destabilizing and send the wrong message to military personnel.
According to the two, Brown would provide stability in the face of Hegseth’s contentious policies, inexperience, and character issues.
Regarding the record, a Trump transition spokeswoman chose not to comment.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s spokesperson chose not to comment.
Michael Duffey, a veteran Pentagon officer who is coordinating the Trump transition team’s Pentagon landing team, was among the people Brown spoke with on Wednesday, according to a defense official.
According to the defense official, the Chairman is actively supporting the transition team and the procedure. He is concentrating on making sure that members of his national security staff and the president-elect are aware of current and emerging dangers.
Hegseth stated that Brown needs to be dismissed during a podcast last month.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs must be fired first. Any General that was involved, General, Admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit has got to go, Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast whose host describes himself as a former U.S. Navy SEAL and CIA contractor.
Hegseth stated that the only litmus test we care about is whether or not people should serve in the military for the purpose of waging wars.
One of the retired generals who has been advocating for Trump to not fire Brown is General Terrence TJ O Shaughnessy, a retired Air Force General who works closely with Elon Musk at SpaceX.
Brown replaced O Shaughnessy as the Commander of Pacific Air Forces, known as PACAF, in 2020 and the two men got to know one another while both serving on active duty. President Trump then nominated Brown to be Air Force Chief of Staff in 2020, making him the first Black American service chief in the U.S. military.
When the death of George Floyd sparked protests across the U.S. in 2020, Brown released an emotional video about the challenges and biases he endured in his personal life and throughout his decades on active duty in the Air Force. He also described the advice he gives to his sons about the dangers they face as young black men in America.
I m thinking about how full I am with emotion, not just for George Floyd, but for the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd, Brown said in the 2020 video. I m thinking about our two sons, and how we had to prepare them to live in two worlds.
Known as an introvert with a quiet demeanor, Brown s candid and raw video surprised many officers who served alongside him. In it, a visibly emotional Brown said, I m thinking about my Air Force career where I was often the only African American in my squadron or, as a senior officer, the only African American in the room.
He added, I can t fix centuries of racism in our country, nor can I fix decades of discrimination that may have impacted members of our Air Force.
Just four days after Brown released the video, on June 9, Trump praised Brown inan online post, saying he is excited to work even more closely with Gen. Brown, who is a Patriot and Great Leader!
Tensions over recruiting memo
Two years later, on August 9, 2022, Brown co-signed a memo that set goals for recruiting officers in the Air Force and Space Force broken down by race, ethnicity and gender.
While the memo said the goals were not intended to undermine the merit-based process for recruiting or promotions, Republicans denounced the memo, arguing it imposed racial quotas on the military and called for reducing the number of white officers in the Air Force.
During Brown s confirmation hearing to be Chairman in 2023, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) pressed him on the memo, asking, Do we have too many white officers in the Air Force?” Schmitt denounced what he called race-based politics being injected into our military.
Somehow, some way we ended up in a place where a General in the Air Force is advocating for racial quotas, whether it be by applicants or the number of officers or maybe the total unit, and I just think that s wrong, Schmitt said. I just don t know how we can continue to have leadership that advocates for this divisive policy.
Brown countered that the memo only laid out goals for applications for officers in the Air Force and Space Force.
Brown became Joint Chiefs Chairman after serving as the Air Force Chief of Staff for just over three years. Throughout his 40 years in the Air Force, Brown served as a combat pilot flying primarily F-16s, and commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East and the Pacific.
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