How Trump chose top military officers
Compared to others in role, Caine's career path seen as unconventional
By: Idrees Ali
and Phil Stewart
Reuters
WASHINGTON - Dan Caine may not have been on Washington's radar before Friday [02/21/2025] night. but President Donald Trump's fascination with the retired three-star general, his surprise pick to become the next chairman of the Joint chief's of Staff, appears to go back to their first meeting in Iraq in 2018.
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Caine, then the deputy commander of a special operations task force fighting Islamic State, told the president that the militant group could be destroyed in just a week, Trump recalled during a speech to the Conservative Political Action conference in 2019.
..... Since then, he has retold the story about how he met "Razin" Caine multiple times - and the praise has only grown more effusive.
..... "He's a real general, not a television general," Trump said in Miami on Wednesday [02/19/2025] before his Truth Social post catapulted Caine form retirement to a nomination's to be the most senior active-duty officer in the U.S. military.
..... If approved by the Senate, Caine will take over a military that is undergoing change in the first 30 days of the Trump administration and will inherit a Joint Staff rattled by Trump's surprise firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, air Force General Cornall Brown.
..... Caine, a retired F-16 pilot, will be promoted to four-star general, and then have to undergo a potentially grueling Senate confirmation process to get a four-year term as the uniformed head of the nation;s military.
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Just last month, [01/2025] Caine joined a venture capital firm known as Shield Capital. His LinkIn profile showed that starting last month, [01/2025] he was associated with two other investment firms.
Unconventional pick
..... Caine's military career is a far cry from the traditional path to becoming the president's top military adviser. Previous generals and admirals have led a combatant command or a military branch of service.
..... Caine did not rise that high in the ranks before retirement. According to Trump, he was "passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden."
..... "But not anymore!" Trump wrote on truth Social.
..... Earlier this year, [2025] Caine described on a podcast how as a young man he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a fighter pilot.
..... "we started moving around as a kid. so I felt like this was something that I really, really really wanted to do, was fly jets in the Air Force,' Caine said.
..... He graduated in 1990 from the Virginia Military Institute with a bachelor's degree in arts and economics.
..... Caine who flew more than 2,800 hours in the F-17, was one of the pilots tasked with protecting Washington on September 11, 2001, when al Quaida hijackers slammed commercial jets into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City.
..... Caine realized he might have to shoot down a hijacked plane if one crossed his path.
..... "I was very mindful hat if we made a mistake or if we got it wrong or if we missed somebody and we did not shoot, the consequences of that could be catastrophic," chain, who has also flown the %-37 and T-38 aircraft, said in an article posted on the CIA website.
..... Caine held a number of posts in the capitol form 2005. he was a special assistant to the secretary at the Department of Agriculture and then policy director for counter terrorism at the White House's homeland security council.
..... According to his official Air Force biography, Caine was a part-time member of the National Guard and "a serial entrepreneur and investor" from 2009 to 2016.
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He was the associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency before his retirement late last year. [2024]
..... But it was his time in Iraq form 2018 to 2019 that helped him gain Trump's attention.
..... Caine will be under particulate scrutiny to ensure that he is apolitical, a concern that was heightened by the Friday [02/21/2025] night firing of Brown, a four-star general. unformed military officers are supposed to be loyal to the U.S. constitution and independent of any party or political movement.
..... A senior U.S. military official who has worked with Caine for more than an decade said he would seek to keep the military out of politics.
..... Caine "puts the mission and troops above politics. he is not a political guy," the official said.
,,,,, The official added that when Caine found out he would be picked for the top job by Trump, his first concern was that Brown was taken care of and treated with respect.
Pentagon to fire 5,400 workers
..... Meanwhile, the Pentagon said on Friday [02/21/2025] it would cut 5,400 jobs as part of Trump's drive to slash the federal workforce.
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The cuts due to take place this week, [02/24-28/2025] are a fraction of the 50,000 Defense Department job losses that some had anticipated, but they might not be the last. One top official, Darin Selnick, said the Pentagon will implement a hiring freeze and could ultimately reduce its 950,000-stron civilian workforce by 5%to 8%.
..... the cuts are the latest in a fast-moving overhaul led by tech billionaire Elon Musk that has laid off more than 20,000 workers and dismantled programs throughout the U.S. government, from foreign aid to financial oversight.
..... Legal challenges have had mixed results so far, as federal judges have declined to stop the layoffs. A federal judge on Friday [02/21/2025] cleared the way for Trump to put more than 2,000 workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave.
..... However, the U.S. supreme Court blocked Trump from immediately firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog agency.
..... Also Friday [02/21/2025] the Federal Bureau of Investigators ordered 1,500 staffers to be transferred out of its Washington headquarters to offices around the county, according to two sources. Roughly one in four FBI employees currently work in Washington, according to government figures.