President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is looking at ways to make good on his promise to purge the military of “woke” generals—including a draft executive order that would create a “warrior board” to review the conduct of officials and recommend names for firing, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The board, which would consist of retired senior military officials, would have the power to recommend the dismissal of any three- or four-star generals that are deemed “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” a draft of the executive order obtained by the Journal reads.
The draft was written by a policy group advising the transition team, a source told the Journal, and is one of many proposals under review. The transition team did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast, and a spokesperson previously declined to comment to the Journal.
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On the campaign Trump made his criticisms of the U.S. military leadership a central pillar of his pitch to voters. In October, he floated the idea of creating a task force to identify “woke” generals at a campaign event with former Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a conservative author who was fired by military brass in 2021 for engaging in “prohibited partisan political activity.”
Trump also said he would demand resignations from all military officials involved in the pullout from Afghanistan in 2021.
“We’ll get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity, to be on my desk at noon on Inauguration Day,” Trump said at a Detroit rally in August. “You know, you have to fire people. You have to fire people when they do a bad job.”
Pentagon officials told Politico last week that they feared Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would be fired by the incoming administration before the end of his four-year term. Brown, who took office in October 2023, has voiced support for diversity initiatives and delivered an emotional speech about his experience as a Black fighter pilot during the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020.
The previous chairman, now retired Gen. Mark Milley, also became a target of Trump-aligned Republicans for defending the military’s educational curriculum and his support for diversity initiatives.
Milley stepped down as chair in September 2023 at the end of his four-year term, having served under both Trump and Biden. A year after his retirement, he made headlines again after calling now President-elect Donald Trump a “total fascist” in a book written by veteran reporter Bob Woodward.
Milley also told Woodward he feared being recalled and court-martialed by the president-elect for disloyalty—something he previously threatened to do to other retired military officials, according to a 2022 book written by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
