Dan Caine, Trump’s Joint Chiefs Pick, Had Unusual Path to Top Ranks
The New York Times
The general made an impression in 2018 when he said, according to the president, that the Islamic State could be defeated in a week.
In President Trump’s telling, Dan Caine, the retired Air Force lieutenant general whom he wants to be his next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made an impression on him when the two men first met in 2018.
The general told the president that the Islamic State was not so tough and could be defeated in a week, not two years as senior advisers predicted, Mr. Trump recounted in 2019.
And at a Conservative Political Action Conference meeting last year, Mr. Trump said that General Caine put on a Make America Great Again hat while meeting with him in Iraq. (General Caine has told aides he has never put on a MAGA hat.)
On Friday, Mr. Trump said he would nominate General Caine after firing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q.
“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Mr. Trump said in a message on Truth Social. “General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”
General Caine is a 1990 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, where he received a degree in economics. He later got a master’s degree in air warfare at the American Military University.
