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Who is Dan 'Razin' Caine? Trump’s connection with his Joint Chiefs of Staff pick dates back to Iraq
Trump on Truth Social announced the dismissal of Brown and nomination of General Caine to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
President Donald Trump picked Dan Caine, a former three-star lieutenant general in the US Air Force who once asserted that ISIS could be eliminated in a week, to succeed Charles “CQ” Brown following his firing from the post of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump in a post on his own social media platform, Truth Social, announced the dismissal of Brown and nomination of General Caine to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” the POTUS wrote.
Trump further hailed Caine as “an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a “warfighter” with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
Dan Caine and Trump bond developed after first meeting in Iraq
Caine holds experience of working with Trump during his first tenure as the president, and the GOP leader praised him for being an “instrumental in the complete annihilation of the ISIS caliphate.”
The 56-year-old Caine and Trump first met in Iraq in 2018, when the former, who was then the deputy commander of a special operations task force battling ISIS, informed the President that the Islamic State could be vanquished in a week rather than two years as senior advisers anticipated.
During the recent Miami's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump in reference to Caine stated, “He's a real general, not a television general.”
Nevertheless, Caine's military background differs significantly from previous Joint Chiefs of Staff chairmen's since he has never held a combatant command or military branch position, which are customary prerequisites for the position. He, however, has served in operational commands and as a policy consultant in Washington.
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According to federal law, the US President must select the highest military leaders from the combatant commands or the chiefs of the military services, both of which are four-star positions. However, the law also permits the President to avoid this obligation if “such action is necessary in the national interest.”
Reactions around Brown's firing and Caine's nomination
Meanwhile, some Democrats have criticised Brown's elimination, calling it an attempt to politicise the military. On the other hand, Republicans welcomed the nomination of Caine.
Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, denounced Trump as “dictators or wannabe kings” in a post on X, claiming this “isn't a banana republic”.
“What Trump and Hegseth are doing is un-American, unpatriotic. It's definition of politicizing our military, and we should expect to see loyalty oaths (not to the Constitution) and worse coming soon,” he wrote.
Former President Barack Obama's envoy to Russia, Michael McFaul, wrote on X: “This is just awful”.
“General CQ Brown was one the finest of them all, especially suited for the challenges of our current era of great power competition with China,” he added.
Amy McGrath, a former Democratic Senate candidate, stated on X that Trump's attempt to “politicize the military” is the only justification to remove the CJCS. “This weakens our country.”
In a statement on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “General Caine embodies the warfighter ethos and is exactly the leader we need to meet the moment. I look forward to working with him.”
A look at Dan Caine's military journey
Caine, who was motivated by his fighter-pilot father, served in the military for a long time. He finished his studies at the Virginia Military Institute in 1990.
He completed almost 2,800 hours of flight time in the F-16, including a mission on September 11, 2001, in which he hurried to intercept possibly hijacked planes over Washington.
Caine served as the associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He also held positions at the White House Homeland Security Council and the Department of Agriculture from 2005 to 2016.
He also worked with the National Guard on a part-time basis and was “a serial entrepreneur and investor” from 2009 to 2016, according to his official Air Force biography. However, it was his deployment to Iraq in 2018 and 2019 that caught Trump's attention.
