This picture offered by the U.S. Air Power exhibits Lt. Gen. Dan Caine.
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President Trump introduced he would nominate retired Air Power Lt. Gen. John Dan “Razin” Caine — a profession fighter jet pilot who patrolled the skies above Washington, D.C., throughout the 9/11 assaults, served within the Center East throughout the combat in opposition to the Islamic State after which labored on the CIA — to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees is the nation’s highest-ranking army officer, in addition to the principal army adviser to the president, secretary of protection and Nationwide Safety Council.
Caine was an uncommon alternative for the highest army job and isn’t well-known. A number of officers on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, granted anonymity as they weren’t licensed to talk publicly on the matter, informed NPR they needed to Google his title.
Caine has not served in any of the roles — Joint Chiefs vice chairman, chief of workers for one of many branches of the armed service, or head of a combatant command — that nominees are legally required to have carried out as a way to be nominated. The president, nevertheless, could waive these necessities if he “determines such motion is critical within the nationwide curiosity.”
The nomination is a component of a bigger shake-up on the Pentagon.
It follows the firing on Friday evening of the earlier chairman, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who was picked by former President Joe Biden in 2023.
Brown was accused of supporting a “woke” agenda by Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth. In his e book The Warfare on Warriors, Hegseth questioned whether or not Brown, who’s Black, obtained the job due to his race.
In a statement, Hegseth mentioned Brown’s substitute represents “the warfighter ethos” that the nation wants proper now — later including that the nation wants management that “will focus our army on its core mission of deterring, preventing and profitable wars.”
Trump, in his nomination announcement, described Caine as “an completed pilot, nationwide safety knowledgeable, profitable entrepreneur and a ‘warfighter’ with vital interagency and particular operations expertise.”
The president mentioned Caine was “handed over for promotion” by Biden.
Caine was among the many pilots tasked with defending D.C. on 9/11
Caine served most not too long ago because the affiliate director for army affairs on the CIA, a place he began in November 2021.
In 1990, Caine was commissioned via an ROTC program on the Virginia Army Institute in Lexington, Va. Whereas on energetic responsibility, Caine primarily served as an F-16 fighter pilot, flying greater than 150 fight hours, in keeping with his military biography.
On Sept. 11, 2001, he was one of many pilots who protected the skies above Washington following the terrorist assaults. It marked the primary time that fighter jets had been deployed over the nation’s capital.
“I bear in mind telling the wingman that I used to be going to fly with that day, ‘Do not shoot anyone. I will make the choice,’ as a result of I used to be very aware that if we made a mistake or if we obtained it fallacious or if we missed anyone and we didn’t shoot, the results of that might be catastrophic,” he said in a 2023 CIA video.
“Not just for the individuals on the bottom, however for the nation as an entire.”
From 2009 to 2016, Caine additionally served within the Nationwide Guard.
He was deputy commander within the U.S. marketing campaign in opposition to ISIS in Iraq and Syria between Could 2018 and September 2019, in keeping with his army biography.
The biography additionally describes him as a “serial entrepreneur and investor.”
In line with his LinkedIn profile, Caine serves on the advisory board of a number of enterprise capital companies, in addition to the protection and house exploration firm Voyager.
Trump has been speaking up Caine since at the least 2019
In 2019, on the Conservative Political Motion Convention, Trump shared his first assembly with Caine in Iraq, the place the overall launched himself by his nickname “Razin.”
“‘Raisin, just like the fruit?’ He goes, ‘Sure, sir, Razin.’ ‘What’s your final title?’ ‘Caine. Razin Caine.’ I mentioned, ‘You bought to be kidding me,'” Trump recalled.
In line with Trump, the overall instructed the Islamic State might be defeated in every week. “One week? I used to be informed two years,” Trump mentioned he requested. Caine defined that the problem was that his orders come from D.C. fairly than being knowledgeable by the sector.
“You are the primary one to ask us our opinion,” Caine informed Trump, because the president recalled. “So I went again and I mentioned, ‘I will get again to you quickly, Razin. I feel you are nice,'” Trump mentioned. “I such as you, Razin Caine.”
Trump referred to this encounter in Iraq once more at last year’s CPAC. However on this retelling, Caine asserted that the Islamic State might be defeated in 4 weeks, not one.
Trump then recalled the overall saying, “‘I really like you, sir. I feel you are nice, sir. I will kill for you, sir.'”
Caine didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
