Trump’s Pentagon pick stokes fears of 'woke' generals purge

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 the line politically and demonstrate your loyalty to this president.”

Kohn said a purge of top-ranked personnel could exacerbate recruitment and retention challenges and spur a “diminishing of the military’s quality.”

“There’s enough difficulty in pursuing a military career up to the highest ranks without implying to the officer corps that you better toe the line politically and demonstrate your loyalty to this president,” he said.  

His allies have also laid out a clear blueprint for thinning the top ranks, including in the Project 2025 policy document from the conservative Heritage Foundation that outlines a roadmap for a Republican administration. 

In the document’s chapter for the Defense Department, Christopher Miller, who served as Trump’s last Defense secretary, wrote that one priority for the next GOP-controlled White House should be to reduce the number of generals, criticizing what he called “rank creep,” or a bloated bureaucracy of flag officers. 

While there has been some criticism of the ratio of the number of generals to service members, critics fear that Trump is looking to simply use the argument to install loyalists. 

Gene Moran, a former Navy destroyer captain and expert adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a perceived political takeover of the military could lead to a mass exodus. 

“There's a belief that it's merit-based,” he said of the military ranks. “It’s a place of great leveling where people from all walks of life can come in and succeed. If you destroy that, it will be decades to recreate that.” 

Moran, now an adjunct professor of public policy at Florida State University, said purging the generals could also upend the system because it takes years to promote a service member to the rank of a general. 

“Do we really want that kind of disruption internally when we're dealing with all of these global geopolitical challenges?” Moran said. 

If Trump does go after generals, Joint Chiefs Chair CQ Brown could be the first on his list, considering his and Hegseth’s past remarks. 

Brown, who is Black, spoke out against racism in the military following the 2020 George Floyd protests and racial reckoning. 

Trump’s transition team is considering whether to fire Brown, along with other top generals, according to Reuters. Kohn, the civil-military expert, said it would be a mistake. 

“I think there would be enormous pushback on that and accusations of racism against Trump,” he said. “General Brown has a very distinguished career [and Trump] would be taking a very serious chance of harming the military.” 

Hegseth, a decorated veteran who led conservative veterans’ advocacy groups before his television career, is against transgender military service and women serving in combat roles.  

In one of his books, “War on Warriors,” Hegseth writes that he is against “woke diverse” recruits from serving and calls out generals as “politicians in camo.” 

Hegseth calls to take back control of the Pentagon from left-wing ideology. “It’s one thing when a corporation or university goes woke. It’s an entirely different thing for the United States military to go woke.”   

Democratic lawmakers have expressed serious concerns about Hegseth, both for his lack of experience and his political views. 

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said Hegseth is “not remotely qualified to be secretary of Defense.” 

“The SecDef makes life-and-death decisions daily that impact our 2 million troops around the globe,” he wrote on the social platform X. “This is not an entry-level job for a TV commentator.” 

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said she had concerns about several of Hegseth's views, including his statements supporting the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters.

"While much is unknown about Mr. Hegseth, I share the bipartisan concern that he is ill-prepared to serve as Secretary of Defense," she said in a statement.

Trump will have wide latitude to thin the ranks of generals. The Senate must approve high-ranking military promotions but has limited power over firings, with Congress in most cases only receiving notification of the retirement of a general or flag officer. 

The potential for a purging of generals has also drawn scrutiny from Trump’s former Pentagon press secretary, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who has become critical of her former boss. 

Griffin told CNN this week that firing generals was not only a “distraction” but “exactly the kind of thing folks like many of us who have spoken out didn't want to see.” 

“We do not have enough people who are raising their hand to serve. To further politicize the military by showing some form of retribution to our general officers, officers who have served distinguishably for decades, I think, could hurt that even more,” she said.  

Leon Panetta, who served as a Defense secretary under the Obama administration, told CNN that the focus has long been “to keep the military separated from politics.” 

“The military swears an oath to the Constitution, not to a political party, not to the president, but to the Constitution. And we ought to keep that separation in place,” he said. 

Panetta said there were “plenty of laws” to punish generals for unprofessional or illegal conduct. But he added that “we don't need to burden the Defense Department or the military with some kind of vigilante hit team in the White House.”