saturday the first 100 days of lyndon johnson's presidency. he became president november 22 1963 after the assassination of president john kennedy. president johnson kept kennedy's cabinet in place and proceeded to push for legislation on taxes and on civil rights. early in his term he also declared a war on poverty in america. watch our american history tv series first 100 days, saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 2. announcer: c-span, democracy unfiltered. we are funded by these television companies and more. including cox. >> when connection is needed most, cox is there to help. bringing affordable internet to families in need, new tech to boys and girls clubs, and support to veterans. whenever and wherever it matters most, we will be there. announcer: cox supports c-span

as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. washingto. host: welcome back. we are joined now by the editor-in-chief of breaking defense. welcome. guest: thank you. host: let's start with the firing of chairman brown. explain what chairman of the joint chiefs does and why he was fired. it's just: the chairman of the joint chiefs is mostly the top for officer in america. his main goal is to be the top military advisor the president. he's not actually in the chain of command, he and order forces to go anywhere. he is basically the uniform guide to say this is our best military advice. she was named air force chief of staff which is fully of the airport under president trump 2020 and been promoted by fighting to be the chairman several years later. the second black man to be nominated at the colin powell to have been jobs. this is a four-year term.

he got about a year and a half the seat before he was fired on friday. as to why he was removed, there hadn't really many statements my the president or secretary of defense pete hegseth why they made this move. we know that very early on, there were comments from pete hegseth's house for david interview right before he was nominated for sexier defense fincen civic with her thing you do in the pentagon is fired the chairman of the joint chief because he is to woke. seems like for a couple of weeks brown might have been safe and ultimately, hegseth seemed to signal that it was to get rid of him and that seems to have happened. host: was he involved in ddi initiatives of the pentagon? guest: certainly as chairman he spoke at events that could be dumped ei, speaking out statements about life this three month or friday and issues.

that is kind of roles of chairman, to speak the military, all the military which includes members of those groups. brown had gained some prominence before he was nominated by trump for chief of staff during some of the situations in 2020 with racial divisions in the country. he spoke about his background as a black man, his experiences. perry eloquently and notably anybody unless without. that had not been an issue, trump nominated him for the air force role after that the amount. so if that is the issue, something changed in the last four years. host: tell us about the individual that is nominated to replace him. guest: dan kane, not general dan kane because he is currently retired. he retired as air force three-star in december. not a very high-profile member of the military. not somebody a lot of people have on their radar, but a very interesting path at one point

was the department of agriculture, elana classified programs, his last big stop was as a military representative to the cia. so not somebody with a very public profile. probably the most public thing about him is how president trump has talked about him in the past. his actually appeared in a number of campaign speeches throughout the years going back to when trump met him i believe in 2019 while he was downrange in the middle east. the story trump says is kane said if you like -- let me take the gloves off i will be phthisis in a week. -- be phthisis in a week. trump has said he also came and put on a maga hat which would be against the rules for military. people have said that last part in happen. john bolton says i was there, that never happened. but he clearly made an impression on trump, enough of one that trump is reaching out to make in his top military advisor. the fact that he is a three-star

and is retired creates some logistical things. this going to need to be a waiver. host: you have to be four-star? guest: a four-star who has had certain commands, where combatant command or some of the top leadership role. there are waivers built into that, but there was a process there, and we haven't seen this before were a retired person is brought on to be chairman of the joint chiefs. so this going to be a bit of a process. host: what is the process for those waivers? guest: the president can bring some buddy back on active duty. the last time this happened most notably was 2003, the bush administration brought back somebody who had been retired to be the army chief of staff. you just have to kind of start the process, this paperwork obviously. people have to divest of any private interest he's built up over the last eight weeks since he retired. they can get done, it will get

done, and i imagine that in the confirmation hearings it will probably be fine because the reality is that has happened for everyone from has put forth. but it's going to be a very interesting process to see. host: care is what president trump put on truth social about this. during my first term he was instrumental in the complete annihilation of the isis caliphate. it was done in record-setting time, a matter of weeks. many so-called military geniuses said it would take years to defeat isis. general kane on the other hand said it could be done quickly and he delivered. what did he actually do, how was he involved? guest: he was a deputy commander during the isis fight. everyone knows the fight was not won in weeks, this was a many years operation against isis that went on. caine, he is not a super well-known figure even in military circles. obviously we've been reaching out and other outlets have as

well, and the feedback we've gotten is he is very smart, he's not going to make a big scene of himself. but this is still a very unusual and surprising pick. host: if you'd like to join our conversation about what is going on at the pentagon and the pentagon budget, you can give us a call. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. we do have a line set aside for current and former military members. you can use that same number to text us if you would like. two other high-ranking members also removed on friday. is that a big deal or is this part of a normal turnover with a new administration? guest: it is a big deal. the two people removed, admiral lisa frank kelly, the chief naval officer, and general james's life, the air force

number two officer, the vice chief of staff. two things can be true. the president absolutely has the right to hire and fire general officers as he feels they fit his needs or don't. it's also not something that has historically been done, in part because of fears about politicizing the uniformed officers. the last time i believe a member of the joint chiefs of staff was fired was 2009 when bob gates fired the air force chief of staff and air force secretary, and the reason then was that a live nuclear weapon was flown over the continental united states by accident. we have not heard if there was anything like that with franchetti, and frankly we haven't got a lot of information from pete hegseth about why he made this move. again, we are drawn back to comments that have made in the run-up to the election as well as after the election about dei hires, and is notable that franchetti was the first woman

to be on the joint chiefs of staff. host: i want to play for you -- who talked about the firings at the pentagon as politicizing the military and then i will get your response. >> it's completely unjustified. these men and women were superb professionals, they were committed to their o3 defend the constitution of the united states, and apparently what trump and hegseth are trying to do is to politicize the department of defense. and it's not surprising. they picked kash patel who is a partisan, who has no respect for the traditions of the fbi, and now they've turned dod and they want everyone in dod to be beholden to the president, not the constitution. they want everyone there to do what they are told regardless of the law. what was also startling over the

weekend was firing all the generals of the military. if you're going to break the law the first thing you could do is you get rid of the lawyers. we are looking at a very dangerous undermining of the values of our military and the repercussions are being felt already. people questioning whether they should stay, talented leaders wondering if they should get out. it's the beginning of a very, very serious degradation of military and politicize should of the military. guest: i think those fears are something we are hearing a lot both inside and outside the building. even from some people who are trump supporters. the military has, by design and by tradition always try to avoid becoming entangled in politics. there's always been a redline you don't cross in that regard. we know that president trump in the past has talked about how he feels the generals should be more loyal to him. we certainly saw his feelings

about general mark milley, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of the appointed and then felt betrayed him and they were actually some legal actions launched against him since trunk -- trump took office again. host: pulling his security detail. guest: exactly. so i think there's a lot of people who are very concerned about this. again, the president has the right to remove officers as he sees fit, that is absolutely legal. but traditionally this is not a -- not been done because they are not supposed to be partisan and political. host: let's talk about the firing of the civilian workforce at the defense department, so probationary employees have been let go at dod. tell us about what exactly is going on and what we are expecting. guest: it's a little unclear if they have been let go yet or if they've just been announced they are going to be let go. the status of that is kind of hard to ascertain.

this is what we seen elsewhere in the federal government with the doge groups coming in and the first thing they do is they let go all the probationary employees because those are the easiest ones to go after. they've also said in a note that it was going to sit to fire 5%-a percent of its federal workforce. the gao said there's about 700,000 people, so that equates to something like 36,000, 50,000 people in line to lose their jobs. that's a significant potential impact in terms of defense operations. yes, i'm sure there's absolutely some bloated bureaucracy, anyone who's been around the pentagon knows this is true. but a lot of these are jobs that have to be done to support the military operations, to support the war fighters to make sure that people in uniform don't have to do some of these other tasks. the pentagon has said it will make sure it's not going to impact actual war fighting operations.

host: does this mean that the pentagon has to depend more on contractors to get certain functions done and will that cost more? guest: that's going to have to be seen. we know that elon musk who is back in the doge group and silicon valley in particular goes after this idea that you break everything down and then you rehire for the jobs that you find you need. that seems to be the attitude they are bringing to the federal workforce. i think i've very different when you're talking about building a widget as opposed to trying to maintain continuity of government military operations. what you don't want to do is find out the guys that we fired are actually vital. we saw at the department of energy the people who do nuclear weapons, 300 of them were let go and they had to scramble to try to bring them back on because they realized we need these people. so i think you are absolutely going to see some of that naturally because there's a lot of people who do a lot of jobs that may not seem important on paper but it turns out they are part of the cause to keep things moving.

guest: let's start with jeff in michigan. caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. could you tell us why you think pete hegseth and trump fired all the jagged officers, the lawyers for the military? guest: it's a great question. unfortunately we've not gotten a lot of information out of the pentagon. frankly, since the turnover of the administration. there haven't been clear lines of communication, so we haven't gotten a real statement about why he made this particular move. you certainly heard senator reed talking about it, saying he views it as a plea decision and a push to be able to say our laws are the laws, and that is certainly the interpretation for a lot of people who are concerned about this. the flipside here is the president has the right to hire and fire the people that he thinks the best fit for the public for what they are trying

to do. host: i just want to play a quick portion of secretary hegseth being asked about general cain's qualifications. >> -- underqualified retired generals to be the joint chief of staff. >> i'm going to choose to reject your unqualified question. >> how did the ones you are replacing prevent roadblocks? >> it's not about roadblocks to an agenda, it's roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander-in-chief. so ultimately i want the best possible lawyers in each service to provide the best possible recommendations the matter what two lawful orders that are given, and we didn't think those particular positions were well-suited, and so we are looking for the best. we are opening it up to everybody to be able to be the top order of the services. host: what is your reaction to that? guest: i think you heard right there that people are going to be concerned about what that means.

these lawyers weren't willing to do what we believed our legal laws. it's important to note the jag set rules for was this action legal, is it legal to use force here or here. soy think anybody was concerned about the liberalization of the military and how this administration might try to push its own ideas through is going to seize on that clip. host: what about the inspector general of the department of defense, is he still there, see one of the once fired, and who is in that position? guest: a number of inspectors were also let go previous to friday's firing scare. i believe the department of defense was one of them. that is in line for what we are seeing across the federal government. thank you, but we are going to put our own people in. host: robert in alabama, member of the military. caller: retired.

i was a combat wounded veteran in vietnam, so i've seen the military screw up many, many, many times. and what gets me is we wanted to have the worst possible withdraw from afghanistan, you would do would biden and his punch did. and after all that disaster, no one was held accountable. no one was fired. all these generals, all they did was cover their ass. i'm glad to see a lot of them go and probably more of them need to go. what do you think about that? guest: sure, i think anybody could reasonably say the afghanistan withdrawal was handled incredibly poorly. i think some people would point back to the initial concept of setting a deadline that we saw from president trump saying we are going to do this and then president biden sank is going to be on this date. a lot of people who covered the pentagon and were aware of

military stuff for pretty quickly this is going to end badly and unfortunately and tragically it did. questions of who should be held accountable for that are certainly fair. if that was the reason for these firings, i'd love to hear a statement in clear lines giving occasion about we looked at this, we feel that brown and franchetti had a clear role in this process, other neither was on the joint chiefs at the time, and that is our reasoning. i think that would be fair if they could explain that. host: another retired military is sean in virginia. caller: good morning. i just want to ask you a question about the pre-positioning of all the troops that are where we are in europe and what is going to happen with the chain of command with all the combat brigades with people that are supporting

them, including civilian workers. thank you. guest: the forces across europe and around the world and what that is going to look like a something we are obviously going to be watching going forward. obviously there have been some comments from this administration, people in this administration about how we need to draw back from being out in the world as much. what that actually looks like, we are waiting to see. there's been no major posture changes yet, no announcements of that. i would expect nothing really changes at least until we get a sense of what the next budget looks like, and that's going to be at least a couple of months. there is some reporting out there about some people who are now in the pentagon and what they suggested about potential cuts, but until we know more, that is just speculation about what that looks like. host: so the pentagon is looking to shift $50 billion in plan funding, how does that work and where that money be coming from? guest: when it knew it

ministration comes in, it's pretty normal for them to say because of the way the budget process works, the next budget which is fiscal 2026, it's largely been built out. that is usually done really by december. when a new it ministration comes in, they take a look at what that is and they make some shift. what hegseth is doing is saying every agency and organization needs to find 8% of its budget and plan to cut that to reinvest that in other areas that are more priorities for this administration. that's a much bigger step than we usually see. it ultimately is tinkering with the budget. it is taking was built by the biden team and saying we are going to shift tomorrow their priorities, but largely things are going to stay the same. they outlined 17 areas that are priority areas to be protected including things like munitions, nuclear weapons, small drones. to the previous callers

question, interesting enough it included the pacific north which is the border, but does not include european command, or south, as areas to be protected, so you might see some force reductions to invest elsewhere. this was kind of a scrambled drill. they said you basically have three weeks to figure this out. we won't see where the what happens with that until the budget rolls out about the army has decided to try to cancel this program or that program. usually what happens in these cases are the services say this program which had nothing to do with these protected areas is now a key part of these protected areas and try to save it. i expect we will see a lot of that. host: sherrill, new york, republican. caller: so trump fired the four-star general who he hired because he thought he was very good, he just wanted to stigmatize him and say this is a

guy doing ddi. trump doesn't care about, all he cares about is loyalty and pete hegseth says he wants the best. he is not even qualified. they don't care about qualifications. trump says he wants total loyalty and to be a dictator and that is exactly what he is doing. none of this is normal. to see cash patel retweet a picture of him taking a -- to liz cheney and he's going to be in charge of the doj, none of that is normal. host: the fbi. what do you think? guest: certainly what we've seen at the pentagon is unusual. it is rare to see officers fired. it's usually with great because when you get to this level of leadership. and again, there may be because that we are not aware of, but at this point there's been no explanation on the ground that they did something so egregious they need to be removed immediately. host: walter in cleveland, ohio,

democrat. caller: good morning. my question is with the savings that president trump and mosque when they make the cuts to these departments, what happens to that money, where does it go? this it go back into the government? guest: it's a great question partly because it's been a lot of questions that how much savings have actually been found. for instance, the doge group but out a list of we've saved xyz and people said those were savings that were already there or they don't actually exist. that list was deleted and updated. where does it go? in theory, it goes back to reinvesting. we've cut x number of overhead, we don't need to spend that money. that means the next budget in theory, the top could be less which in theory means the government can spend less money and that could go toward paying

off some of the debt or tax cuts. if you don't need that money, you can bring in less money in theory. we have to see how much these are real, where they actually are. host: charleston, south carolina, independent. caller: good morning. i'm also retired military but this is the line i've always called in on. i just want to speak about the air force. a lot of people don't for the understand what the military is all about. when i was in the military, i quickly learned that, i am a black guy, and like people were in society and everything, a list of guys in the military. you do not associate with

officers in the military. you don't marry officers in the military. and brown being in the air force , he had officers. in officers you got rated and non-rated. he was a rated officer. that is the top. that is the top air force that you can be is a fighter pilot. you are a fighter pilot in the air force, you are first class. he was a captain. but he's a four-star general and a black guy. do you know how hard you've got to fight to be in a position like that? it is a tough thing. the president can do whatever he wants to do. that is exactly what he did. host: we got that. any comment on that, and also

about recruitment numbers, how are they doing for the services? guest: certainly brown was well respected, really somebody who you never heard bad things about. people attacked him early on as somebody with intelligence capabilities. in terms of recruiting, i don't have numbers on hand right now. this been a recruiting member at large. the air force did fall behind its recruiting goals the last cycle. part of the reason that secretary hegseth has talked about getting rid of ddi initiatives is in his mind recruiting has been hurt by this process, emphasis i'm going toward minority communities or listserv communities instead of more traditional military communities. so the argument for going against ddi has been this will actually help recruiting. the counterargument is well, we are going after other communities because this community is not actually

stepping up recruiting the way that we needed to. so we are going to see in the numbers of things change. obviously this will be a process that takes a couple of years, you don't get numbers right away, but it will begin interesting litmus test. host: >> on tuesday, march 4, watching c-span's live coverage of president trump's first address of his second term. it begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern with a preview of the evening followed by the president's speech at 9:00 p.m., then watch the democrat spots after. we will take your calls and get reaction on social media. on c-span 2, you can watch a simulcast of the coverage followed by reaction from lawmakers live on capitol hill. watch president's address to congress march 4 beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern, our simulcast

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