Joint Chiefs nominee Caine denies Trump’s claim he wore MAGA hat

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, President Trump’s nominee to be the next Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, told lawmakers he never wore a Make America Great Again hat during a 2018 meeting with him in Iraq.

The former fighter pilot, call sign “Razin,” added that comment Tuesday during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Sir, for 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and my commitment to my commission. I have never worn any political merchandise,” Mr. Caine told Sen. Roger F. Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

According to media reports, Mr. Trump claimed that the general put on a MAGA hat and said “I’ll kill for you, sir” during their meeting while visiting U.S. troops in western Iraq. The president also recalled the general telling him that ISIS could be defeated in a matter of weeks, rather than the two years that were predicted.

“We’re only hitting them from a temporary base in Syria,” Mr. Trump said the general told him. “But if you gave us permission, we could hit them from the back, from the side, from all over — from the base that you’re right on, right now, sir. They won’t know what the hell hit them.”

Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail last year that Mr. Caine proved correct, defeating ISIS in four weeks.

Tuesday was the first time Mr. Caine publicly contradicted wearing the cap. He testified that U.S. military personnel are obligated to be nonpolitical and nonpartisan. He did push back on the MAGA hat issue, however.

“I went back and listened to those tapes, and I think the president was actually talking about somebody else,” Mr. Caine told Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s top Democrat. “I’ve never worn any political merchandise or said anything to that effect.”

Mr. Caine acknowledged that he is an “unconventional choice” for the nation’s top military position. While he spent most of his military career on active duty, he also spent time in the Air National Guard when he left the service to pursue business interests. He was a White House fellow and also served as a senior military officer at the Central Intelligence Agency.

But he has never been a chief of a military service nor a commander at one of the military’s combatant commands. All recent JCS chairmen had held at least one such position before being nominated.

If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Caine will be promoted to four-star general and replace Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who was ousted in the new administration’s shake-up of top military leaders.

Mr. Reed noted to the nominee that Gen. Brown “was not even halfway into his tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

The Rhode Island Democrat also noted that the Trump administration had removed several other top Pentagon officials, including the Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, and the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

“To this day, no explanation has been given for the dismissal of these officers,” Mr. Reed said. “As such, I remain deeply concerned that they were dismissed for political reasons, which sends a chilling message through the ranks.”

While the White House wants to put the Signal scandal behind it, Democrats on the committee peppered Mr. Caine with questions about the use of a Signal group chat by several top Trump administration officials to discuss U.S. operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen. 

Mr. Caine was not part of the Signal group chat, which was made public by an Atlantic magazine editor whom a White House official inadvertently added to the group.

“If you heard that a mission of the kind that was discussed on an unsecure platform — Signal — and you were in one of those planes about the launch on that mission against the Houthis, knowing what you know about the substance of that conversation, how would you feel?” asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat. 

Mr. Caine agreed that “we need to always protect the element of surprise,” going on to parry the question by saying he was “thankful, as always, that we protect our servicemen and women who are going into combat operations.”

Mr. Blumenthal said he’s heard from “a lot of pilots and other military men and women” who said they were angry about the Signal discussions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the conversation did not contain classified details.

Mr. Caine said he had “not had anybody come to me and tell me that they’re angry about it, so I can’t comment on that.”