Late Friday night, President Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force

General CQ Brown, breaking with decades of precedent as part of a broader purge of senior

military leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also announced the administration would

replace the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Here's Hegseth explaining the decision on Fox News Sunday.

Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don't exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything, anything that happens in their spots.

For perspective, we turn now to retired rear admiral James McPherson.

He served as Undersecretary of the Army and as the Army's General Counsel during the first Trump

administration.

It's great to have you here.

So let's start with President Trump's decision to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

General CQ Brown.

Brown is the first in the job

since 2007 to not serve a full term. And there's the added detail that Brown, a four-star general,

is being replaced with a now retired three-star general, Dan Kane, whose military service does not

include any of the key assignments that were identified in law

as prerequisites for the job. He'll need to get a waiver. So how do you interpret this pick?

Well, it's not surprising that he fired General Brown that was rumored in the media many times

before the inauguration and then even afterwards.

Perhaps even greater surprise was his firing the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Franchetti,

who was the first female Admiral that the Navy had as his Chief of Naval Operations.

It speaks of a profound concern that perhaps the president is putting in place individuals

who he can be assured would be loyal to him and not loyal to the Constitution or loyal to the

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