US Senate confirms Caine as joint chiefs chair
PHOTO CAPTION: U.S. Air Force portrait of Lt Gen John D. Caine, dated Nov. 5, 2021.
By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voted to confirm retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan "Razin" Caine on Friday as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two months after President Donald Trump abruptly fired his predecessor.
The Senate voted 60 to 25 to confirm Caine. He won strong support from both Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, although the vote took place early in the morning after Democrats refused to agree to a quicker confirmation.
Trump stunned the Pentagon in February, and angered congressional Democrats, by firing Air Force General C.Q. Brown as the nation's top military officer only two years into his four-year term, saying he had picked Caine to replace him.
It was the first time a president had ever relieved a joint chiefs' chairman or named a retired officer to fill the position. Trump also pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of U.S. military leadership.
Democrats said they worried that Trump, who has fired a series of top national security officials, was surrounding himself with "yes men" loyal to him and not the Constitution.
Before the confirmation vote, the Senate earlier approved Caine's return to the military as a major-general, a step mandated by law because Caine retired last year.
A retired F-16 pilot, Caine did not follow the traditional path to becoming the president's top military adviser, which entails leading a combatant command or a military branch of service.
He was a part-time member of the National Guard and "a serial entrepreneur and investor" from 2009 to 2016. He was most recently associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency before his retirement late last year.
Trump has told a political story about meeting Caine when he visited Iraq in 2018, suggesting that Caine had put on a pro-Trump "Make America Great Again" hat in a show of loyalty.
Caine said during his confirmation hearing that he had never worn one of the hats. He presented himself as apolitical, saying he was willing to face dismissal and would push back if Trump asked him to carry out illegal orders.
Caine pledged to follow U.S. laws and the Constitution.
During last year's presidential campaign, Trump spoke of firing "woke" generals and those responsible for the troubled 2021 pullout from Afghanistan.
Trump's secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, also had been skeptical of Brown before taking the helm of the Pentagon with a broad agenda that includes eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military.
In his most recent book, Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and military veteran, questioned whether Brown would have gotten the job if he were not Black.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Peter Graff)
