his name is frank kendall.uate, an army veteran, a former undersecretary of defense, and for the last four years he was secretary of the united states air force. he is not a flappable man, and yet, friday night, president donald trump and defense secretary pete hegseth announced the sudden and unexplained removal of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the highest ranking officer in the united states navy, the vice chief of staff of the air force and the senior lawyers, the senior legal officers in the air force and the army and the navy. now, frank kendall responded to that in writing. and what he wrote to me is the unflappable veteran defense official version of an air raid siren. just listen to this, quote. president trump's decision to fire senior military leaders without cause is foolish and a disgrace. it politicizes our professional military in a dangerous and debilitating way. what frightens me most is the removal of three judge advocates general, the most senior uniformed legal authorities in the

joining me now, frank kendall. he was secretary of the air force under president biden.so published an op ed in the new york times today titled america has a rogue president. this was a very compelling and, i think, illuminating op ed that you've written to go into the heart of the matter as to why jags in particular, have been so impactful and why you wanted to write this. tell me what it is about this position and the firings around that you think could be very consequential. >> well, i thought, first of all, that in the coverage of the firings, the focus was on the very senior people such as general brown, whom i have great admiration for, and that the firing of the three jags seemed almost. it didn't make sense to me that they were included. i couldn't understand why, except that as the secretary just said, he wants people who are going to be more compliant, people who are going to be more flexible is one nice way to say it about the laws of armed conflict, about the restrictions on the military's use against american citizens and a number of other areas. all the jag

, and that's a 2022 memo in which the air force cq brown, the air force secretary at the time, frank kendall pool, not the people who were actually hired, but that they asked that the applicant pool, the people who actually applied, be more reflective of america, and they put numerical targets. they wanted african americans, they wanted asian americans, they wanted women. and they didn't meet any of those. they didn't meet those goals, but they wanted to make more of an effort to reach out to more underserved, underrepresented communities that the pentagon and the trump people didn't like that as either. but that's it. you know, you noted earlier that when the on friday night, when the notice finally came out that cq brown was being fired, there's nothing there's no reason given. it's just, you know, when you talk to the trump people afterwards and when we talk to them afterwards, they all say it's because the president wanted his own team. he wanted to bring his own people in. well, the military is supposed to be like the fbi. it's not supposed to be the chairman of the joint chiefs of staf