{"id":36856,"date":"2025-02-28T12:30:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/28\/former-defense-secretaries-condemn-trumps-firing-of-senior-military-officials-in-scathing-letter\/"},"modified":"2025-02-28T12:30:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:30:49","slug":"former-defense-secretaries-condemn-trumps-firing-of-senior-military-officials-in-scathing-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/28\/former-defense-secretaries-condemn-trumps-firing-of-senior-military-officials-in-scathing-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Former defense secretaries condemn Trump\u2019s firing of senior military officials in scathing letter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Five former defense secretaries issued a scathing letter on Thursday assailing President Donald Trump for firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior officers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an open letter published Thursday, former\u00a0Defense\u00a0Secretaries\u00a0James Mattis, Leon Panetta, Lloyd Austin, Chuck Hagel, and William Perry urged Congress to hold immediate hearings on Trump\u2019s recent firings of Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown and several other senior military leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They said senators should \u2018refuse to confirm\u2019 any new DOD nominations in response to the firings.<\/p>\n

In the letter, they alleged that Trump\u2019s actions undermined \u2018our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security\u2019 and they accused the president of trying to turn the apolitical U.S. military into an instrument of partisan politics and using firings, which extend to the top Army, Navy and Air Force lawyers, to do so.<\/p>\n

All defense secretaries but one, James Mattis, served under Democratic administrations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump announced the firings late on Friday, but his administration has yet to clarify in any detail what caused the unprecedented shakeup, which also included the dismissal of the head of the Navy, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female officer to lead a military service.<\/p>\n

Air Force General C.Q. Brown was only the second Black officer to become Joint Chiefs chairman and he was less than halfway through his four-year term when he was let go.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mr. Trump\u2019s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration\u2019s desire to politicize the military,\u2019 they wrote. \u2018We, like many Americans \u2013 including many troops \u2013 are therefore left to conclude that these leaders are being fired for purely partisan reasons.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment on the letter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The former defense secretaries called on Congress to hold hearings to \u2018assess the national security implications\u2019 of Trump\u2019s dismissals. Republicans hold a majority in both chambers.<\/p>\n

The letter cautioned that the actions at the Pentagon could deter Americans from choosing a life in the military, should their careers be judged through the lens of partisan politics. It could also have a chilling effect on speaking \u2018truth to power,\u2019 they cautioned.<\/p>\n

\u2018We write to urge the U.S. Congress to hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its Constitutional oversight responsibilities,\u2019 they wrote.<\/p>\n

Fox News\u2019 Liz Friden and Reuters contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five former defense secretaries issued a scathing letter on Thursday assailing President Donald Trump for firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior officers.\u00a0 In an open letter published Thursday, former\u00a0Defense\u00a0Secretaries\u00a0James Mattis, Leon Panetta, Lloyd Austin, Chuck Hagel, and William Perry urged Congress to hold immediate hearings on Trump\u2019s recent firings <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":36857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}