Five former defense secretaries lambasted President Donald Trump for his Pentagon firings, calling them “reckless,” according to The Washington Post. In an extraordinary letter Thursday, Lloyd Austin, Jim Mattis, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, and William Perry, former defense secretaries from both sides of the aisle, called for congressional hearings into Trump’s firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. C.Q. Brown, and other senior military officials. They said the purge was “partisan” by design. “We are deeply alarmed by President Trump’s recent dismissals of several senior U.S. military leaders,” the former officials wrote. “We write to urge the U.S. Congress to hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its Constitutional oversight responsibilities.” In response, the White House’s National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said Trump’s actions are “well within” his authority. The rebuke follows the firing of Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as chief of naval operations, and the first woman member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. James Slife, the Air Force’s no. 2, and the top military lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force were also given their marching orders.
