The US Department of Defense is bracing itself for a scenario of its ranks being purged when President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House, unnamed current and former officials told Reuters.
They claimed that Trump’s second term will see him prioritize loyalty and fire the Pentagon’s high-ranking military officers and career civil servants he regards as disloyal. In particular, the President-elect could target the current and former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown and Mark Milley, respectively, perceived by Trump as “woke” generals.
One US military official, however, played down concerns over high-level firings among the armed forces, arguing in an interview with Reuters that the firing-induced chaos within the US military's chain of command would create political backlash and be unnecessary for Trump to achieve his goals.
As for the Pentagon’s career civil servants, who are among the almost 950,000 non-uniformed employees working within the US military, they could be subjected to loyalty tests and replaced with Trump’s conservative allies, the officials argued.
During his election campaign, Trump pledged to fire “woke generals” if elected, as he said the US “can't have woke military." He vowed to create a task force to monitor such generals and eliminate diversity training in the US Armed Forces.
In 2021, then-US President Trump called for the resignation of then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley, who Trump said “went to Congress and actually defended Critical Race Theory being shoved down the throats of our soldiers”.
Trump said at the time that Milley must step down and be replaced “with someone who is actually willing to defend our military from the leftist radicals who hate our country and our flag”.