The US Senate on Friday voted to confirm retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan “Razin” Caine as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, two months after President Donald Trump abruptly fired his predecessor.
The Senate voted 60 to 25 to confirm Caine, who won strong support from both Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, although the vote took place early in the morning after Democrats refused to agree to a quicker confirmation.
Trump stunned the Pentagon in February, and angered congressional Democrats, by firing Air Force General C.Q. Brown was the nation's top military officer only two years into his four-year term, saying he had picked Caine to replace him.
DAILY POST reports that it was the first time a president had ever relieved a joint chiefs' chairman or named a retired officer to fill the position.
Trump also pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of U.S. military leadership.
Democrats said they were worried that Trump, who has fired a series of top national security officials, was surrounding himself with “yes men” loyal to him and not the Constitution.
The Senate earlier, before the confirmation vote, approved Caine's return to the military as a major-general, a step mandated by law because Caine retired last year.
Caine, a retired F-16 pilot, reportedly did not follow the traditional path to becoming the president's top military adviser, which entails leading a combatant command or a military branch of service.
DAILY POST reports that he was a part-time member of the National Guard and a serial entrepreneur and investor from 2009 to 2016 and was most recently associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency before his retirement late last year.
