Retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, President Donald Trump‘s pick to become the highest-ranking military officer, pledged to lawmakers that, if confirmed, he would remain apolitical and provide his best advice to senior leaders.
Uniformed military officers are supposed to be loyal to the Constitution and not any political party or movement, but Trump has claimed that Caine showed support for the “Make America Great Again” movement during the president’s first term, raising concerns that he would not remain that way.
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Trump has said on several occasions that he met Caine in Iraq in 2018 and that in addition to providing the president with a much faster timeline for defeating the Islamic State, Caine, Trump said, put on a MAGA hat to show his support for the president.
Caine denied that he had ever put on a political hat during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. The president announced on Feb. 21 that he fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and said he would be nominating Caine.
“Sir, for 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and my commitment to my commission, and I have never worn any political merchandise,” Caine said, later adding that he came to the conclusion after listening to Trump’s remarks that the president was not talking about him.
Several lawmakers on the committee raised questions about whether he was prepared to give the president, secretary of defense, and National Security Council the advice they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear.
“Part of the discussion that’s been here today has been a concern by the committee, that any person that has the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs recognize just how serious their role is,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, adding that the chairman needs to recognize “that while you don’t control the policy that is set, your role, as this committee sees it, is in many cases the last resort to providing the right types of advice that elected leaders need to hear, regardless of whether or not they want to hear it.”
Caine responded to Rounds’s remarks, calling it “the most important part of this job.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said Trump’s decision to fire Brown “reveals, once again, President Trump’s intention to install yes-men and women with fealty to him and not to the Constitution or the American people.”
She also raised Brown’s predecessor, Gen. Mark Milley, who retired during the last administration, but Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered a review of his actions for possible demotion. The current administration stripped Milley of his security detail and removed his portrait from the Defense Department.
“General Milley was a former chair of Joint Chiefs, stood up to President Trump, and here’s what happened to him: President Trump took away his security detail, his security clearance, even took down his portrait in the Pentagon,” Hirono said. “That’s not all. General Milley is now under investigation by the department’s inspector general to see if he will be able to retire as a four-star general. It’s always a challenge to stand up to this president.”
Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) comparatively accused Milley of having “modeled inappropriate and political behavior,” calling him “the most political chairman of the Joint Chiefs that I believe that we’ve ever had.”
Caine called himself an “unconventional” pick for the position but said, “These are also unconventional times.”
Despite a more-than-three-decade-long career in the Air Force, he does not meet the legal requirements to hold the position, so his nomination requires the president to sign a waiver.
Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is required to be a four-star general or admiral who previously served in either the vice chairman position, as the chief of one of the service branches, or one of the Combatant Commands.
Various lawmakers brought up the revelations that senior administration leaders debated whether to start a sustained military campaign against the Yemen-based Houthis in a Signal group chat, which unknowingly included a journalist.
No uniformed military leader was included in the chat, including the acting chairman, Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, and Caine argued he shouldn’t have been included in it anyway because it “was a partisan political chat, and so the joint force should not have been represented in there.”
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He also noted that the military “should always preserve the element of surprise,” and he added that if he saw sensitive information being shared on an unapproved platform, “I think I would weigh in and stop it if I was a part of it, but in this case, I wasn’t.”
Caine would get confirmed by the Senate as long as no more than three Republicans vote against his confirmation and all Democrats and independents do as well.