Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Sunday that President Donald Trump’s firing of Gen. CQ Brown Jr. from his role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sends “a dangerous message to the military” on political loyalty to the president.
Trump fired Brown, the United States’ highest-ranking military officer, on Friday. Then-President Joe Biden had nominated Brown in 2023 for a four-year term.
A chairman should “give independent advice on the military and national security,” Booker told moderator Kristen Welker in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” noting that the position’s terms are set so the chairman will be independent of politics.
“Donald Trump has thrown that out the window and is sending a dangerous message to the military: It’s not about your independent expertise, it’s not about your years of service. It’s about your personal political loyalty to me, and that is a dangerous message to send to our military at a time when we really need independent, credible advice in going to the president, because we live in a difficult, complex world,” Booker said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Booker’s remarks.
Brown was confirmed by the Senate in 2023 with strong bipartisan support, garnering 83 votes in favor of his confirmation. He succeeded former Chairman Mark Milley.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said during an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” that Brown’s firing was “completely unjustified,” and went on to accuse Trump of trying to “politicize” the Defense Department.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended Trump’s dismissal of Brown on Sunday.
“I have a lot of respect for CQ Brown. I got to know him over the course of a month. He’s an honorable man, not the right man for the moment,” Hegseth said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
Hegseth separately announced Friday that he was requesting nominations for judge advocates general, commonly known as JAGs, for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Asked about the search for JAG replacements during the “Fox News Sunday” interview, Hegseth said that “we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything — anything that happens in their spots.”
“It’s time for fresh blood, so we’re going to open up those positions to a broader set and a merit-based process to find the best lawyers possible to lead the Army, the Air Force and the Navy,” he added later. “There’s nothing about purging, there’s nothing about it illegal.”
Reed, who serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, slammed the move to replace JAGs, saying in his ABC News interview that “if you’re going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers.”
“We’re looking at a very dangerous undermining of the values of our military, and the repercussions are being felt already,” he continued, referring to the JAGs and Brown. “People questioning whether they should stay, talented leaders wondering if they should get out. It is the beginning of a very, very serious degradation the military and politicization of the military.”
Working with Republicans
During his interview Sunday, Booker, a longtime Trump critic, took aim at the president for not expressing interest in working with Democrats on issues such as inflation.
“This is what a strong president does: They get elected, especially without a mandate, without the popular vote, you come in and say, ‘I want to work with Democrats,’” Booker said when asked whether he would work with the White House on lowering prices.
“But he didn’t do it the strong-president way. He started issuing these executive orders. None of them had to do with lowering prices,” Booker said. Trump has signed executive orders on tariffs, which he argues will benefit the American economy, though economists have argued that higher costs will likely ultimately be passed to consumers.
Democrats have approached the first few weeks of the Trump administration with multiple rhetorical strategies. Some Democrats have argued that the party must be selective in picking fights with the administration, while others have leaned into rhetoric that Trump is leading the country toward a “constitutional crisis.”
When asked whether it was effective messaging for Democrats to frame Trump as a threat to democracy, Booker did not answer directly, instead arguing that Democrats “should be talking about what’s happening to Americans.”
“I sit with 46 other Senate Democrats, and they are united in this fight, working with state attorneys general, working with governors and working with the greater American population to stop Donald Trump from violating the Constitution, violating separation of powers, violating civil service laws and many other things we’re doing,” he said when asked a second time about his perspective.
Booker also laid the blame for a potential shutdown at Republicans’ feet as they continue to craft budget plans in the House and Senate, emphasizing that the GOP holds control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
He argued that Republicans in effect are already working to shut down the government.
“They are already showing that they want to shut down the government. They’re trying to shut down [the] Department of Education. They’re trying to shut down USAID,” he said. “They have the power. They won the election. They need to keep the government going.”
