Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Caine, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, acknowledged Tuesday that “I’m an unconventional nominee.”
But “these are unconventional times,” Caine told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He’s never led a military combatant command or large division and has never led a military branch.
Trump picked Caine, approvingly citing his “Razin” call sign, after abruptly firing General Charles Q Brown as the highest-ranking military officer partway through his term.
“No sir,” Caine said when asked whether he’d ever worn a “Make America Great Again” hat, or any other partisan gear. Trump has been quoted as recounting that Caine donned a “MAGA” hat and told the president “I’ll kill for you, sir” during a meeting in Iraq in 2018.
“I think the president actually was talking about somebody else,” Caine said, as a transcript of the comments appears to indicate.
Citing pending inquiries, Caine did his best to sidestep questions on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing details of an imminent attack on Houthis in Yemen in an unsecured chat with other administration officials.
“We should always preserve the element of surprise” and “never put our warfighters in harm’s way,”Caine said. “I have always communicated proper information in the proper channels.”
Caine, 56, is a former F-16 pilot and served on a special operations task force in Iraq combating Islamic State. He last served as the CIA’s associate director for military affairs — a liaison between the spy agency and military leaders.
He previously worked as the principal staff assistant and adviser to the secretary of defense for all programs protected under special access controls, more commonly known as “black programs,” according to his official biography.
Despite generally friendly questioning by senators of both parties, Democratic Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said Caine shouldn’t be sitting before them. She said Trump improperly fired Brown because he wants “yes men and women with fealty to him rather than the American people.”
© American Military News
