Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday defended President Trump’s firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top military officer, arguing that he was “not the right man for the moment.”
President Trump removed the chairman, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., on Friday and nominated a retired three-star general to replace him. Mr. Hegseth followed that announcement by removing the chief of naval operations and the Defense Department’s top military lawyers.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Hegseth said “nothing about this is unprecedented,” adding that presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama have fired or dismissed officers. A chairman of the Joint Chiefs has never been fired, though when the position had two-year terms, the George W. Bush administration declined to renew the term of Gen. Peter Pace in 2007, citing opposition in Congress.
“This is a reflection of the president wanting the right people around him to execute the national security approach we want to take,” Mr. Hegseth said.
But Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the series of firings “was completely unjustified.”
Mr. Reed said on ABC News’s “This Week” that the administration wanted the Defense Department to be beholden to the president. “They want everyone there to do what they’re told, regardless of the law,” he added.
The firing of the lawyers, he added, was startling and had prompted some talented leaders to question if they should stay in the military.
“If you’re going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers,” Mr. Reed said.
Mr. Hegseth rejected the criticism, and said that traditionally senior military lawyers had been chosen by one another. But, he said, he wanted “fresh blood,” and that he would open up the positions to a broader candidate pool to find the best military lawyers to lead each of the armed services.
“Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks,” Mr. Hegseth said.
Mr. Hegseth was also pressed on the administration’s plans for the war in Ukraine, and Mr. Trump’s criticism of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
He praised Mr. Trump for bringing the Kremlin toward peace talks, and defended the bilateral negotiations between Russia and the United States. Democrats, Europeans and Ukrainians have criticized those talks for leaving out Ukraine.
“Standing here and saying, ‘you’re good, you’re bad, you’re a dictator, you’re not a dictator, you invaded, you didn’t’ — it’s not useful,” Mr. Hegseth said. “It’s not productive.”
In his interview Mr. Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said that Mr. Trump was essentially “surrendering to the Russians.”
“This is not a statesman or a diplomat,” Mr. Reed said. “This is just someone who admires Putin, does not believe in the struggle of the Ukrainians and is committed to cozying up to an autocrat.”
