President-elect Trump is forging ahead with a dramatic shake-up of the military, with fears of a purge of “woke” generals fueled by his nomination this week of Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department.
Trump is considering a draft executive order to create a “warrior board” of retired senior military officials who would review three- and four-star officers for dismissal, allowing a fast-track to reshape the military command structure, according to The Wall Street Journal.
That plan has sparked concerns across the national security and defense establishment, especially after Trump selected Hegseth, who has espoused far-right views about rolling back “woke” policies in the armed forces and rooting out military leaders who implemented the changes.
“Well, first of all, you got to fire, you know, you got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Hegseth said on the "Shawn Ryan Show” podcast last week.
“Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit, it’s got to go,” he added, using an abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“Either you’re in for warfighting that and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.”
While on the campaign trail, Trump often explicitly mentioned that he wants to go after “woke” generals in the military.
“We have a military that's not woke. You may have a few people on the top that are woke and we're going to get rid of them so damn fast, your head's going to explode,” Trump said at an Oct. 7 town hall in North Carolina.
Richard Kohn, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina and an expert on civil-military relations, said Trump was sending a signal to the officer corps “that you better toe........