Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., who President Trump had threatened to fire once in power, on Monday said he plans to remain the country’s highest-ranking military official.
“That’s my plan,” he told reporters while leaving the U.S. Capitol Building, as reported by CNN.
Brown, who attended Trump’s inauguration ceremony in the Capitol rotunda, for months has been the target of Trump’s and his associates’ vows to immediately fire U.S. military leaders who they view as too focused on diversity initiatives.
Among those attacking Brown was Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Defense secretary, who said on a podcast in early November that Brown, who is Black, needed to be fired.
“First of all, you got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s–t has got to go,” Hegseth said on the “Shawn Ryan Show.”
That rhetoric seemed 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 tone” on the four-star general.
A picture later released by Trump’s camp made its rounds on social media showing the two sitting side-by-side in conversation at the game.
Brown became only the second Black man to serve as the Joint Chiefs chair on Oct. 1, 2023, joining the late Colin Powell. The chair typically serves a four-year term, meaning Brown could stay in the role potentially until Sept, 30, 2027.
Trump has an acrimonious relationship with retired Gen. Mark Milley, who Trump appointed to the role during his first term. Milley has publicly feuded with Trump, and was among those who received last-minute pardons from President Biden on Monday.
A former Air Force combat pilot who eventually rose through the ranks to become the service’s chief of staff, Brown made waves when he released an emotional video addressing the 2020 protests across the U.S. sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“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 video. “I’m thinking about our two sons and how we had to prepare them to live in two worlds.”
He continued: “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.”
